Part 34

“That would be perfectly lovely,” replied Clara Belle, a look of hope dawning in her eyes; “and we can think afterwards how to get it over to mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dare to do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?”

“Cross my heart!” Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a reproachful look, “you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret like that! Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what's happened?--Why, Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at the foot of the hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up from Milltown stead of coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's all alone, and I can ride home with him and ask him about the ring right away!”

Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward walk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her handkerchief as a signal.

“Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!” she cried, as the horse and wagon came nearer.

Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.

“Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?”

Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight at his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.

“Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm so glad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask you about,” she began, rather breathlessly.

“No doubt,” laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; “I hope the premium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?”

“Now, Mr. Aladdin, you will not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's not the lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you'd make up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.”

“Well,” and “I do remember that much quite nicely.”

“Well, is it bought?”

“No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.”

“Then, dear Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?”

“That depends. I don't relish having my Christmas presents given away. I like to have them kept forever in little girls' bureau drawers, all wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'll change my mind. What is it you want?”

“I need a wedding ring dreadfully,” said Rebecca, “but it's a sacred secret.”

Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made him so delightful to young people.

“I thought it was perfectly understood between us,” he said, “that if you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white”--

“Coal black,” corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning finger.

“Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger, draw you up behind me on my pillion”--

“And Emma Jane, too,” Rebecca interrupted.

“I think I didn't mention Emma Jane,” argued Mr. Aladdin. “Three on a pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.”

“Emma Jane never leaps, and she'd be afraid of a prancing chestnut,” objected Rebecca.

“Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white--I mean coal black--charger with somebody else.”

Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle but Mr. Aladdin.

“The ring isn't for me!” she explained carefully. “You know very well that Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos's Grammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.”

“Why doesn't the groom give it to his bride himself?”

“Because he's poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn't a bride any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.”