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Ann Lizy was invited to spend the afternoon and take tea with her friend Jane Baxter, and she was ready to set forth about one o’clock. That was the fashionable hour for children and their elders to start when they were invited out to spend the afternoon.

Ann Lizy had on her best muslin delaine dress, her best embroidered pantalets, her black silk apron, and her flat straw hat with long blue ribbon streamers. She stood in the south room–the sitting-room–before her grandmother, who was putting some squares of patchwork, with needle, thread, and scissors, into a green silk bag embroidered with roses in bead-work.

“There, Ann Lizy,” said her grandmother, “you may take my bag if you are real careful of it, and won’t lose it. When you get to Jane’s you lay it on the table, and don’t have it round when you’re playin’ out-doors.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ann Lizy. She was looking with radiant, admiring eyes at the bag–its cluster of cunningly wrought pink roses upon the glossy green field of silk. Still there was a serious droop to her mouth; she knew there was a bitter to this sweet.

“Now,” said her grandmother, “I’ve put four squares of patchwork in the bag; they’re all cut and basted nice, and you must sew ’em all, over and over, before you play any. Sew ’em real fine and even, or you’ll have to pick the stitches out when you get home.”

Ann Lizy’s radiant eyes faded; she hung her head. She calculated swiftly that she could not finish the patchwork before four o’clock, and that would leave her only an hour and a half to eat supper and play with Jane, for she would have to come home at half-past five. “Can’t I take two, and do the other two to-morrow, grandma?” said she.

Her grandmother straightened herself disapprovingly. She was a tall, wiry old woman with strong, handsome features showing through her wrinkles. She had been so energetic all her life, and done so much work, that her estimation of it was worn, like scales. Four squares of patchwork sewed with very fine even stitches had, to her, no weight at all; it did not seem like work.

“Well, if a great girl like you can’t sew four squares of patchwork in an arternoon, I wouldn’t tell of it, Ann Lizy,” said she. “I don’t know what you’d say if you had to work the way I did at your age. If you can’t have time enough to play and do a little thing like that, you’d better stay at home. I ain’t goin’ to have you idle a whole arternoon, if I know it. Time’s worth too much to be wasted that way.”

“I’d sew the others to-morrow,” pleaded Ann Lizy, faintly.

“Oh, you wouldn’t do it half so easy to-morrow; you’ve got to pick the currants for the jell’ to-morrow. Besides, that doesn’t make any difference. To-day’s work is to-day’s work, and it hasn’t anything to do with to-morrow’s. It’s no excuse for idlin’ one day, because you do work the next. You take that patchwork, and sit right down and sew it as soon as you get there–don’t put it off–and sew it nice, too, or you can stay at home–just which you like.”

Ann Lizy sighed, but reached out her hand for the bag. “Now be careful and not lose it,” said her grandmother, “and be a good girl.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t run too hard, nor go to climbin’ walls, and get your best dress torn.”

“No, ma’am.”

“And only one piece of cake at tea-time.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And start for home at half-past five.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Little Ann Lizy Jennings, as she went down the walk between the rows of pinks, had a bewildered feeling that she had been to Jane Baxter’s to tea, and was home again.

Her parents were dead, and she lived with her Grandmother Jennings, who made her childhood comfortable and happy, except that at times she seemed taken off her childish feet by the energy and strong mind of the old woman, and so swung a little way through the world in her wake. But Ann Lizy received no harm by it.