long to make it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting!
Wait a minute, please; don't be angry, and don't say no just yet, till
I explain more. It'll be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow
morning and find no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all
disappointed, and the children crying, with their muslin dresses all
bought for nothing! O dear Mr. Simpson, please don't take our flag away
from us!"

The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: "But
I don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got yer flag? I hain't!"

Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered,
and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the
winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes
on the now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling
on a pin.

"Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of
your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It's wicked of
you to take it, and I cannot bear it!" (Her voice broke now, for a doubt
of Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly darkened her mind.) "If you keep it,
you'll have to keep me, for I won't be parted from it! I can't fight
like the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just
like a panther--I'll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve
to death!"

"Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something to cry
for!" grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and
leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet
and dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's hat in the process,
and almost burying her in bunting.

She caught the treasure passionately to her heart and stifled her sobs
in it, while Abner exclaimed: "I swan to man, if that hain't a flag!
Well, in that case you're good n' welcome to it! Land! I seen that
bundle lyin' in the middle o' the road and I says to myself, that's
somebody's washin' and I'd better pick it up and leave it at the
post-office to be claimed; n' all the time it was a flag!"

This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a
white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had attracted
his practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and
deftly removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it
were clean clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there
was no good