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On Top of Concord Hill
by Maria D. Wilkes
from the series
Little House
We're going to town! We're going to town!' Eliza sang out as Caroline helped button up her red plaid dress. Eliza was two years younger, and the dress had been Caroline's the year before. Mother had tucked and hemmed it so that it now fit Eliza perfectly.
'Concord is not really a town.' Caroline sighed. 'Not like Brookfield.'
Brookfield was thirty miles away. It was a proper town with a wagon maker's, a shoemaker's, a blacksmith's, and best of all a general store with shelves overflowing with everything anyone would ever want to buy. Brookfield was where Caroline had lived all her life until just last year. Now she lived deep in the woods, in a small house made of logs.
Concord was only two miles away. It was supposed to be a town, but it was really just a place where two roads crossed each other.
'Brookfield was not very big when Mother and Father first settled there,' Martha said in her know-it-all voice. Ever since she had turned eleven, Martha had been acting very grown up. Now she whirled around, admiring how her pretty green sprigged calico skirt flounced about. Only Martha's dress was new. Martha had been allowed to pick the fabric from the bolts of cloth Zobey the peddler had brought in his leather sacks when he had come traipsing through the woods the month before. Martha was lucky. She was the oldest girl, and so she always got to wear the dresses first.
'Mother said there are lots of new settlers in these parts just like us,' Martha continued matter-of-factly, 'I bet we'll see all kinds of folks today at Camp Meeting.'
Caroline felt a quiver of excitement run through her. They had not met many neighbors in the whole year they had lived in their little cabin surrounded by tall fir trees and thick oaks. But today was a special day. They were going to Concord for a Camp Meeting. Caroline did not really know what a Camp Meeting was. Mother said there would be preaching and singing, just like in church. Caroline knew there might also be marrying, although Mother had not said so.
Caroline bit her lip and glanced sideways at her sisters. She longed to tell them the secret she had been keeping for weeks. A secret no one, not even Mother, knew she was holding inside. Two months before, in April, Caroline had overheard something she knew she was not meant to hear. Standing just around the side of the cabin, Caroline had listened while Mr. Holbrook asked Mother to marry him.
Mr. Holbrook was one of Mr. Austin Kellogg's workers. Mother had been hired byMr. Kellogg, the richest man in Concord, to cook for these workers last year. Every day for several months, strange men had come into Caroline's home morning, noon, and night, and Mother had prepared food for them. Most of the men had been rough and very rude. They had terrible manners while they gulped down food at Mother's table. But Mr. Holbrook had been different. He was quiet and thoughtful. In his spare time he had helped the boys around the farm. At Christmas he had even bought them shiny panes of glass to put in the window frames, replacing the pieces of tanned deerskin they had stretched over the openings. Mr. Holbrook pretended that Santa Claus had brought the glass panes, but Caroline knew better.
Mother had not said yes or no to Mr. Holbrook's proposal. As Caroline had listened, Mother had told him that she would make her decision by the time the circuit rider came through Concord in June. The circuit rider was Reverend Speakes. And he would be preaching at Camp Meeting today.
'Are you girls ready?' Mother's voice rang out cheerfully from the bedroom she shared with the girls. Caroline turned to look, and as Mother stepped into the cabin's main room, she let out a little gasp.
All through the winter and spring Caroline had seen Mother in the same brown woollen dress and white apron every day. Now she wore her fine striped blue dress with the dainty lace trim around the collar. Tiny pearl buttons ran in a perfect line from her throat all the way down to her toes. The skirt flared out from Mother's perfectly slender waist in a lovely bell shape. Her long black hair had been brushed until it shone and was coiled back into a heavy twist.
'You're so pretty!' Eliza cried, rushing to touch the dress with careful fingers.
For weeks Caroline had been looking for signs that Mother was going to be married again. It had been five whole years since Father's ship had gone down in a terrible storm. Caroline missed Father very much. She thought about him every day. She did not know if she would like having a new father. Mr. Holbrook did not smile very much. He did not laugh and joke and sing the way Father had. But Caroline knew Mr. Holbrook was kind and gentle. He had done a great many nice things for them for no reason at all.
Now, as Caroline watched Mother give a playful little curtsey to Eliza, her green eyes sparkling, she wondered if this was a sign. Surely Mother wearing her very best dress and looking so happy meant that she had made her decision.
'Let me look at my pretty girls,' Mother said, clapping her hands together.
Caroline stood in a row with her sisters, and Mother pulled at their sleeves and checked their hems one last time.
'I'm glad this dress still fits you,' Mother said when it was Caroline's turn.
(Copyright by Maria D. Wilkes.)
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