Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

The old yellow stagecoach rolled slowly along the dusty road to Riverboro.It was a hot morning in May, and the driver was a kind man named Mr. Jeremiah Cobb.That day the coach had only one passenger: a small, thin girl with dark hair and bright eyes.

Her name was Rebecca Randall, and she was ten years old.Rebecca lived far away on a poor farm called Sunnybrook Farm.Her father was dead, and her mother had seven children and very little money.

So Rebecca was being sent to live with her two aunts in the brick house at Riverboro.The aunts, Miranda and Jane, would give her a home and send her to school.Rebecca sat alone on the hard back seat, holding a small pink parasol.

The parasol was old, but she loved it more than anything else she owned.After a while, she called out to the driver and asked if she could sit up front with him.Mr. Cobb was surprised, but he stopped the horses and let her climb up beside him.

From that moment, Rebecca did not stop talking.She told him about her family, her farm, her brothers and sisters, and her long name.Her mother had loved two heroines from books, she explained, so she was called Rebecca Rowena.

Mr. Cobb had never heard a child talk so much, or say such interesting things.“Mother told me to be quiet on the trip,” Rebecca said at last, “but it is so hard to remember.”