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On Saturday afternoon the parson’s wife called on old Mrs. Jennings. The sweet, gentle young lady in her black silk dress, her pink cheeks, and smooth waves of golden hair gleaming through her worked lace veil entered the north room, which was the parlor, and sat down in the rocking-chair. Ann Lizy and her grandmother sat opposite, and they both noticed at the same moment that the parson’s wife held in her hand–the bead bag!

Ann Lizy gave a little involuntary “oh;” her grandmother shook her head fiercely at her, and the parson’s wife noticed nothing. She went on talking about the pinks out in the yard, in her lovely low voice.

As soon as she could, old Mrs. Jennings excused herself and beckoned Ann Lizy to follow her out of the room. Then, while she was arranging a square of pound-cake and a little glass of elderberry wine on a tray, she charged Ann Lizy to say nothing about the bead bag to the parson’s wife. “Mind you act as if you didn’t see it,” said she; “don’t sit there lookin’ at it that way.”

“But it’s your bead bag, grandma,” said Ann Lizy, in a bewildered way.

“Don’t you say anything,” admonished her grandmother. “Now carry this tray in, and be careful you don’t spill the elderberry wine.”

Poor Ann Lizy tried her best not to look at the bead bag, while the parson’s wife ate pound-cake, sipped the elderberry wine, and conversed in her sweet, gracious way; but it did seem finally to her as if it were the bead bag instead of the parson’s wife that was making the call. She kept wondering if the parson’s wife would not say, “Mrs. Jennings, is this your bead bag?” but she did not. She made the call and took leave, and the bead bag was never mentioned. It was odd, too, that it was not; for the parson’s wife, who had found the bead bag, had taken it with her on her round of calls that afternoon, partly to show it and find out, if she could, who had lost it. But here it was driven out of her mind by the pound-cake and elderberry wine, or else she did not think it likely that an old lady like Mrs. Jennings could have owned the bag. Younger ladies than she usually carried them. However it was, she went away with the bag.

“Why didn’t she ask if it was yours?” inquired Ann Lizy, indignant in spite of her admiration for the parson’s wife.

“Hush,” said her grandmother. “You mind you don’t say a word out about this, Ann Lizy. I ain’t never carried it, and she didn’t suspect.”

Now, the bead bag was found after this unsatisfactory fashion; but Ann Lizy never went down the road without looking for the patchwork. She never dreamed how little Sally Putnam, the minister’s wife’s niece, was in the mean-time sewing these four squares over and over, getting them ready to go into her quilt. It was a month later before she found it out, and it was strange that she discovered it at all.

It so happened that, one afternoon in the last of August, old Mrs. Jennings dressed herself in her best black bombazine, her best bonnet and mantilla and mitts, and also dressed Ann Lizy in her best muslin delaine, exquisitely mended, and set out to make a call on the parson’s wife. When they arrived they found a chaise and white horse out in the parsonage yard, and the parson’s wife’s sister and family there on a visit. An old lady, Mrs. White, a friend of Mrs. Jennings, was also making a call.

Little Ann Lizy and Sally Putnam were introduced to each other, and Ann Lizy looked admiringly at Sally’s long curls and low-necked dress, which had gold catches in the sleeves. They sat and smiled shyly at each other.

“Show Ann Lizy your patchwork, Sally,” the parson’s wife said, presently. “Sally has got almost enough patchwork for a quilt, and she has brought it over to show me,” she added.