Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

The old stagecoach was rumbling along the dusty road that runs from Maplewood to Riverboro. The day was as warm as midsummer, though it was only the middle of May, and Mr. Jeremiah Cobb was taking it as easy on the horses as he could, yet never forgetting that he carried the mail. The hills were many, and the reins lay loosely in his hands as he lounged back in his seat and stretched one leg luxuriously over the dashboard. His worn felt, broad-brimmed hat was pulled well down over his eyes, and he turned a quid of tobacco in his left cheek.

There was one passenger in the coach—a small, dark-haired girl in a glossy tan calico dress. She was so slender and so stiffly starched that she slid from place to place on the leather cushions, even though she braced herself against the middle seat with her feet and held out her cotton-gloved hands on each side to keep her balance. Whenever the wheels sank deeper than usual into a rut, or jolted suddenly over a stone, she bounced into the air, came down again, pushed back her funny little straw hat, and picked up or settled more firmly a small pink sunshade, which seemed to be her chief responsibility—unless we count a bead purse, into which she looked whenever the road allowed, finding great satisfaction that its precious contents neither disappeared nor grew less. Mr. Cobb knew nothing of these harassing details of travel; his business was to carry people to their destinations, not necessarily to make them comfortable on the way. Indeed, he had forgotten the very existence of this unremarkable little passenger.

When he was about to leave the post office in Maplewood that morning, a woman had gotten down from a wagon and, coming up to him, asked if this was the Riverboro stage and if he was Mr. Cobb. When he said yes, she nodded to a child who was eagerly waiting for the answer and who ran toward her as if she feared being a moment too late. The child might have been ten or eleven, but whatever her exact age, she seemed small for it. Her mother helped her into the stagecoach, set a bundle and a bouquet of lilacs beside her, made sure an old hair trunk was roped on behind, and finally paid the fare, counting out the silver with great care.