Dearborn liked my
compositions, and I thought I'd better be a writer, for I must be
something the minute I'm seventeen, or how shall we ever get the
mortgage off the farm? But even that hope is taken away from me now,
for Uncle Jerry made fun of my story Lancelot Or The Parted Lovers and I
have decided to be a teacher like Miss Dearborn.

The pathetic announcement of a change in the career and life purposes of
Rebecca was brought about by her reading the grown-up story to Mr. and
Mrs. Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the
person who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make
a story; and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that
assertion at once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded
(quite truly) as untenable, though why she certainly never could have
explained. Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted
for the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful
novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though a stage-driver and no reading man, at
once perceived the flabbiness and transparency of the Parted Lovers the
moment they were held up to his inspection.

"You see Riverboro people WILL make a story!" asserted Rebecca
triumphantly as she finished her reading and folded the paper. "And it
all came from my noticing the river drivers' tracks by the roadside, and
wondering about them; and wondering always makes stories; the minister
says so."

"Ye-es," allowed Uncle Jerry reflectively, tipping his chair back
against the apple tree and forcing his slow mind to violent and
instantaneous action, for Rebecca was his pride and joy; a person, in
his opinion, of superhuman talent, one therefore to be "whittled into
shape" if occasion demanded.

"It's a Riverboro story, sure enough, because you've got the river
and the bridge and the hill and the drivers all right there in it; but
there's something awful queer bout it; the folks don't act Riverboro,
and don't talk Riverboro, cordin' to my notions. I call it a reg'lar
book story."

"But," objected Rebecca, "the people in Cinderella didn't act like us,
and you thought that was a beautiful story when I told it to you."

"I know," replied Uncle Jerry, gaining eloquence in the heat of
argument. "They didn't act like us, but 't any rate they acted like
'emselves! Somehow they was all of a piece. Cinderella was a little too
good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on th