FullReads

Ann Lizy colored to her little slender neck; patchwork was nowadays a sore subject with her, but she looked on as Sally, proud and smiling, displayed her patchwork.

Suddenly she gave a little cry. There was one of her squares! The calico with roses on a green ground was in Sally’s patchwork.

Her grandmother shook her head energetically at her, but old Mrs. White had on her spectacles, and she, too, had spied the square.

“Why, Miss Jennings,” she cried, “that’s jest like that dress you had so long ago!”

“Let me see,” said Sally’s mother, quickly. “Why, yes; that is the very square you found, Sally. That is one; there were four of them, all cut and basted. Why, this little girl didn’t lose them, did she?”

Then it all came out. The parson’s wife was quick-witted, and she thought of the bead bag. Old Mrs. Jennings was polite, and said it did not matter; but when she and Ann Lizy went home they had the bead bag, with the patchwork and the best pocket-handkerchief in it.

It had been urged that little Sally Putnam should keep the patchwork, since she had sewed it, but her mother was not willing.

“No,” said she, “this poor little girl lost it, and Sally mustn’t keep it; it wouldn’t be right.”

Suddenly Ann Lizy straightened herself. Her cheeks were blazing red, but her black eyes were brave.

“I lost that patchwork on purpose,” said she. “I didn’t want to sew it. Then I lost the bag while I was lookin’ for it.”

There was silence for a minute.

“You are a good girl to tell of it,” said Sally’s mother, finally.

Ann Lizy’s grandmother shook her head meaningly at Mrs. Putnam.

“I don’t know about that,” said she. “Ownin’-up takes away some of the sin, but it don’t all.”

But when she and Ann Lizy were on their homeward road she kept glancing down at her granddaughter’s small face. It struck her that it was not so plump and rosy as it had been.

“I think you’ve had quite a lesson by this time about that patchwork,” she remarked.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ann Lizy.

They walked a little farther. The golden-rod and the asters were in blossom now, and the road was bordered with waving fringes of blue and gold. They came in sight of Jane Baxter’s house.

“You may stop in Jane Baxter’s, if you want to,” said old Mrs. Jennings, “and ask her mother if she can come over and spend the day with you to-morrow. And tell her I say she’d better not bring her sewing, and she’d better not wear her best dress, for you and she ain’t goin’ to sew any, and mebbe you’ll like to go berryin’, and play out-doors.”