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“She’ll be sorry, won’t she?” said the little girl, whose name was Sally.

The gentleman got back into the chaise, and the three rode off with the patchwork. There seemed to be nothing else to do; there were no houses near and no people of whom to inquire. Besides, four squares of calico patchwork were not especially valuable.

“If we don’t find out who lost it, I’ll put it into my quilt,” said Sally. She studied the patterns of the calico very happily, as they rode along; she thought them prettier than anything she had. One had pink roses on a green ground, and she thought that especially charming.

Meantime, while Sally and her father and mother rode away in the chaise with the patchwork to Whitefield, ten miles distant, where their house was, Ann Lizy and Jane played as fast as they could. It was four o’clock before they went into the house. Ann Lizy opened her bag, which she had laid on the parlor table with the Young Lady’s Annuals and Mrs. Hemans’s Poems. “I s’pose I must sew my patchwork,” said she, in a miserable, guilty little voice. Then she exclaimed. It was strange that, well as she knew there was no patchwork there, the actual discovery of nothing at all gave her a shock.

“What’s the matter?” asked Jane.

“I’ve–lost my patchwork,” said Ann Lizy.

Jane called her mother, and they condoled with Ann Lizy. Ann Lizy sat in one of Mrs. Baxter’s rush-bottomed chairs and began to cry.

“Where did you lose it?” Mrs. Baxter asked. “Don’t cry, Ann Lizy, maybe we can find it.”

“I s’pose I–lost it comin’,” sobbed Ann Lizy.

“Well, I’ll tell you what ‘t is,” said Mrs. Baxter; “you and Jane had better run up the road a piece, and likely as not you’ll find it; and I’ll have tea all ready when you come home. Don’t feel so bad, child, you’ll find it, right where you dropped it.”

But Ann Lizy and Jane, searching carefully along the road, did not find the patchwork where it had been dropped. “Maybe it’s blown away,” suggested Jane, although there was hardly wind enough that afternoon to stir a feather. And the two little girls climbed over the stone-walls and searched in the fields, but they did not find the patchwork. Then another mishap befell Ann Lizy. She tore a three-cornered place in her best muslin delaine, getting over the wall. When she saw that she felt as if she were in a dreadful dream. “Oh, what will grandma say!” she wailed.

“Maybe she won’t scold,” said Jane, consolingly.

“Yes, she will. Oh dear!”

The two little girls went dolefully home to tea. There were hot biscuits and honey and tarts and short gingerbread and custards, but Ann Lizy did not feel hungry. Mrs. Baxter tried to comfort her; she really saw not much to mourn over, except the rent in the best dress, as four squares of patchwork could easily be replaced; she did not see the true inwardness of the case.

At half-past five, Ann Lizy, miserable and tear-stained, the three-cornered rent in her best dress pinned up, started for home, and then–her grandmother’s beautiful bead bag was not to be found. Ann Lizy and Jane both remembered that it had been carried when they set out to find the patchwork. Ann Lizy had meditated bringing the patchwork home in it.

“Aunt Cynthy made that bag for grandma,” said Ann Lizy, in a tone of dull despair; this was beyond tears.

“Well, Jane shall go with you, and help find it,” said Mrs. Baxter, “and I’ll leave the tea-dishes and go too. Don’t feel so bad, Ann Lizy, I know I can find it.”

But Mrs. Baxter and Jane and Ann Lizy, all searching, could not find the bead bag. “My best handkerchief was in it,” said Ann Lizy. It seemed to her as if all her best things were gone. She and Mrs. Baxter and Jane made a doleful little group in the road. The frogs were peeping, and the cows were coming home. Mrs. Baxter asked the boy who drove the cows if he had seen a green bead bag, or four squares of patchwork; he stared and shook his head.