THE QUILT OF HAPPINESS

Riverboro, that generally assumed an indifferent and semi-recumbent attitude when it observed strangers, sat up and took notice the moment that Rebecca Rowena Randall arrived on the noon stage from up-country and alighted at the brick house on the main street of the village. Mrs. Perkins, the nearest neighbor, with her only daughter, Emma Jane, palpitating with interest beside her, watched the cautious descent of the little passenger from the stage and the particularly tempestuous tweak she gave her headgear as her feet touched the earth. Then they watched with equal interest the lifting of her hair trunk from the back of the stage by Jerry Cobb; the appearance of Miss Jane on the stone steps; and well at the rear, the tall, grim figure of Miranda Sawyer.

Mrs. Perkins could see Miranda's greeting in the shape of a bony finger directing the child to wipe her dusty feet on the mat; then the screen door of the brick house slammed behind her, and Rebecca was a member of the brick-house family and a citizen of Riverboro.

"Poor little mite!" sighed Mrs. Perkins.

"Can I go over and see her now?" asked Emma Jane, already cherishing hopes of intimacy.

"Of course you can't!" responded her mother briskly. "Do you s'pose Mirandy wants the house full o' comp'ny the minute Rebecca gits there?"

"Just me wouldn't make it full," objected Emma Jane.

"It takes precious few to make a house too full to please Mirandy Sawyer!" and Mrs. Perkins resumed her seat at the window overlooking the river. "You can keep an eye on the gate, an' if they let her ou'doors again to-night you can run over and scrape acquaintance, if you want to."

Now Rebecca's vivid little personality had been somewhat obscured in the big family of children at Sunnybrook Farm, but in Riverboro it had the effect of a Roman candle suddenly bursting among the lesser fireworks on a Fourth-of-July evening. She was extraordinarily gregarious and within a year knew everybody on both sides of the river. "Anybody'll do for Rebecca so long's it's folks!" grumbled her Aunt Miranda. "This street is gen'ally chock-full o' young ones nowadays, and Rebecca's always eggin' 'em on to somethin' new. When she asks me if she can borrer the silver call bell an' I see her makin' off with a lead pencil an' paper, I always suspicion she's organizin' somethin'."

Miranda was right. There had been a positive epidemic of organizations in Riverboro's "younger set" in the last few months. Most of them had died an early, though natural, death, while others had been put out of existence by unfeeling parents and guardians. Miss Dearborn, the village teacher, was really the inspiring force behind the first one. Feeling a lack of com- mon purpose in the district school, she had proposed a club for general improvement and public service of some sort. In order to develop initiative and executive ability, she asked the older girls and boys to meet alone to draft a constitution and choose a name. She was somewhat confused when they issued from their executive session quickly and firmly entitled The Jolly Jumpers, and learned that the officers were to be selected, not for intellectual or moral superiority, but according to the height that they were able to jump over a broomstick. This unintentionally athletic society still had its healthful and noisy meetings now and again, although it never fulfilled Miss Dearborn's ambitions.

The Guild of Ministering Sisters could not find anybody who desired its ministrations, but one or two secret societies were in a flourishing condition, notably The Bouncers. Mr. Perkins, the local blacksmith, had a way of saying to the young people, when they had interrupted his horse-shoeing long enough: "Now clear out, young ones, or I'll bounce ye!" The idea of this picturesquely named society was that, if any member should be caught cheating in games or lessons, fibbing or tale-bearing, or in other misdemeanors of equal magnitude, he—or she—would find a card on desk, or in hat, with this neatly printed phrase on it:

YOU ARE HEREBY BOUNCED

The shame and terror of this card oppressed the most callous boy, and, his mind reverting to the last sin that he had committed and wondering how it could have been found out, he promptly turned over a new leaf in order to be reinstated in good society.

The success of the month of June had been a club called The Pantry Rioters. Romeo Smith, a dimpled, wide-mouthed, freckle-faced boy was the founder, and the first members were all of the (then) superior sex. The girls, however, discovered the general intentions of the club, and Rebecca drafted such an engaging constitution and by-laws that the boys chivalrously widened the gates of membership. Rebecca, whose eligibility as an active member did not admit a shadow of doubt, was constrained to decline all but honorary connection with The Pantry Rioters; and those who knew the discipline of the brick house admitted the wisdom of her decision. "But oh, how I could riot if only I wasn't being fed and clothed and slept and schooled by Aunt Miranda!" thought Rebecca passionately, as she carefully copied the by-laws of The Pantry Rioters:

"1. No member shall riot in anybody's else pantry but his own.

"2. No member shall attack the swing-shelf or wire netting box in the cellar as being too easy and not risky enough, and not a pantry anyway.

"3. No member shall be greedy or really thievish, nor shall he nibble or take away anything that is needed for the next meal, if he knows it; this being not nice, besides making trouble all round.

"4. Any member who does a rioting act of great daring right under the eye of the enemy shall be allowed to wear a red button to school.

"5. Any member who is caught in the act of rioting and reprimanded, and so forth, shall wear a blue button to school and describe all the circumstances, however painful, at a meeting of the club, where he will receive comfort and sympathy.

"6. Any little titbit subtracted from the pantry may be shared with another member, thus removing any suspicion of evil from rioting; the idea being to show that a person could take a tart, doughnut, frosted cake, or spoonful of preserves at any time if only he was not so good and honest."

Oh, how delicious were the last school days of the June term when The Pantry Rioters first came into being! Who could forget the morning when Romeo Smith arrived at school flushed and panting and took his place in the line within one minute of being tardy? And there, in the button-hole of his coat lapel, gleamed the red badge of courage, the button covered by the girls with scarlet ribbon, but never worn before!

At ten o'clock Miss Dearborn remarked: "Romeo Smith is well prepared with his lessons and is behaving himself with perfect propriety, except for a perpetual grin, for which I can see no reason. However, as many of the scholars cannot help staring at him, I would ask him please to remove the red button he is wearing and place it in his vest pocket."

In the reading lesson when Sam Simpson came to the phrase, "The spy gave a paltry excuse," he read it, "pantry excuse," and there was such a flood of laughter let loose in the schoolroom that Miss Dearborn was obliged to say: "Did no one ever mistake a word before? It is not polite to make fun of another scholar. You may be the next one yourself."

And then, after school, to hear from Romeo's lips that his mother, in passing out of the pantry with a colander full of fresh doughnuts under her left arm, had paused to lean from the window and speak to her husband; whereupon Romeo, with magnificent audacity—grandmother in adjacent kitchen, mother holding pan, and father outside window—had seized a hot doughnut and, mindful of the red button, had further tempted fate by taking the knife from the cheese plate and carving off a piece two inches wide! With this rich booty, avoiding the safe side door, he went through the living-room, passing a visiting aunt and two younger brothers of highly suspicious disposition, and sped to school in time to avoid the tardy mark.

"How perfectly elegant!" ejaculated Emma Jane Perkins.

"Where is the doughnut?" asked Rebecca, mindful of the sixth by-law.

"I had nowheres to keep it but under my hat, so I et it up; but you can see the place where it was." And Romeo exhibited the shiny circular spot on the top of his head where the hot doughnut had lain.

School had been closed for two weeks now, and one afternoon Rebecca leaned over her gate and surveyed the landscape. Emma Jane Perkins was watching from her doorway, and Alice Robinson from hers, while several other girls were concealed behind board-piles or clumps of trees, waiting for the hour of play to arrive. Suddenly all hearts leaped with gladness, for Rebecca was seen to remove the brown ribbon from one of her braids and put it in her apron pocket, and to substitute a piece of bright pink, legal tape.

"What are you doing to your hair, Rebecca?" asked Aunt Jane, coming to the door unexpectedly.

"Changing one of my ribbons, Aunt Jane."

"What for, child?"

"Well, it's a secret, Aunt Jane, but I don't mind telling you a little bit: it's a signal. I can't fire a cannon or build a bonfire on the heights, so this is just a way of telling the girls I've got an idea."

"I should think they might guess that, any time, without your decking yourself out like a horse at a cattle fair," smiled Aunt Jane.

Rebecca laughed and shook her long braids. "But it's such a nice, ladylike, romantic way of signaling, Aunt Jane!"

"Well, maybe it is; but take it off before you come in the house, won't you?"

"As if I wouldn't, Aunt Jane? And, anyway, my idea is new, but it joins on to something you and Aunt Miranda know about already—Miss Roxy's quilt."

"Oh!" sighed Miss Jane comfortably. "If it's nothing worse than that I won't worry."

"It's a beautiful idea!" and Rebecca glowed. "The girls will love it, and Miss Dearborn, and the minister's wife; and you would, too, but I mustn't show partiality between you and Aunt Miranda. The mothers will think it's silly, so it's got to be kept secret."

"I don't know. They all approved of your making extra patchwork, and if you're any happier to put your work together so that it will amount to something, and if you want to give it away, why, it's all to your credit, and it doesn't cost any one family much. You'd better give up the notion of quilting it, Rebecca."

"Oh, why, Aunt Jane?"

"Because you five girls could never finish it by cold weather. I'll put it in the frame for you and teach you how to 'tack' it."

"We all know how to quilt," objected Rebecca.

"Yes, but you don't know what it is to take those thousands of little stitches all in even rows. You can't break your thread, or make knots, or pucker the quilt; and the part near the edges of the frame is very hard to do neatly. Have you chosen your pattern?"

"No, we'll choose the pattern this afternoon. We've looked at all the spare bedroom quilts there are in Riverboro. There's Mrs. Perkins's 'Goose Chase,' and Mrs. Robinson's 'Church Steps,' Mrs. Milliken's 'Rising Sun,' Mrs. Watson's 'Job's Troubles,' Mrs. Meserve's 'Duck's Foot in the Mud,' and—"

Miss Jane put her fingers in her ears. "Goodness gracious, Rebecca, how you do run on! I hope you don't forget your Aunt Miranda's 'Johnny Round the Corner'; but don't you girls fly too high or you'll come down heavy. You can get gay, pretty pieces and put four in a square and then join your squares corner to corner with plain ones in between. Perhaps Mrs. Perkins will have some new goods to help you out, and that'll set off the patchwork. Now, it's four o'clock and you can go and play, Rebecca."

Rebecca sped like an arrow shot from a bow, Emma Jane sped contemporaneously; Alice Robinson, Candace Milliken, and Persis Watson appeared as suddenly as if they had been concealed in woodchuck holes.

Miss Jane looked wistfully after the five slim little figures disappearing with arms about one another's waists and heads close together. "A child makes a wonderful difference," she thought. "I don't know what Aurelia's other children are like, but I can't think how she could part with Rebecca, even to get her educated! Anyhow it's put the sun back into the sky for me!"

III

Old Miss Roxanna Lyman lived half a mile up the river road and an eighth of a mile up a lane that led from it and stopped at her dooryard. Why the house was ever built there was a mystery. If you were a stranger in Riverboro and were walking up to play with the Simpson children and found everybody away from home, and had spied high-bush blueberries a little farther on, and chokecherry trees in full bearing in a green lane, that you had never noticed before, and had strayed along the grass-grown road that had known hardly a wagon wheel for years, you would finally have passed an obscuring clump of trees and come suddenly upon Miss Roxy's little black house.

At least that was what Rebecca did. The door was open, andsitting in a rocking-chair in the tiny entry was, as Rebecca reported to Miss Jane later, "the very most sorrowfullest old lady any one had ever seen." No one could have told her age. She was slight and spare; she was huddled in a gray shawl; the wrinkles in her face—wrinkles of pain, anxiety, grief, poverty, and foreboding—fairly made a lattice-work on the skin. You knew by looking at her that no one had gone out from the black house in the morning and no one was coming back to it at night.

Rebecca had heard of her and instantly asked: "Are you Miss Roxy Lyman? Please excuse me for stumbling right into your dooryard. I didn't see there was one till I was in it."

"Yes. I'm Roxy Lyman," said the old lady in a voice that trembled with surprise and suggested the rarity of callers. "Won't you set down a spell?"

Rebecca needed no second invitation to embark on a new experience. She sank down on the step, flung her hat on the grass and pushed the hair back from her warm forehead. "I'm Rebecca Rowena Randall," she explained fluently. "My home is at Sunnybrook Farm, up Temperance way, but I'm living with my two Aunt Sawyers at the brick house so's to get educated. There's no education in Temperance, just plain teaching, and only a few months a year. Sometimes we didn't have any lessons at all, because when there were big boys it took all teacher's time to make them behave. Down here Miss Dearborn can manage a big boy as easy as anything, so of course we have nothing to do but learn."

This was only the natural beginning of a cataract of conversation, and the acquaintance between Rebecca and Miss Roxy Lyman was now well started. Rebecca proceeded to open her mind on a dozen subjects of passionate interest to herself. Clasping her knees with her hands, she rippled on in a way never permitted at the brick house.

"I like the way your house is set," she said; "side end to the road, looking down over the fields and seeing the river flowing-ways. I think a black house with vines growing over it is nice too; a white one is always so stare-y. The river's splendid company, don't you think so?"

"It's all I have," was the reply. "I don't look at it much nowadays."

"I get tired of looking at the same old hat, but I never get used to the old river somehow; but perhaps it isn't quite enough company all by itself. Of course there's the trees."

"They ain't leaved out the year round," said Miss Roxy.

"No-o-o. But you're sure they will 'leave out.'" All this time Rebecca had stolen little side glances at Miss Roxy. "I suppose you read when you're not doing house-work?" she ventured.

"I've read all my books over and over so I just set an' think!" And Miss Roxy's eyes wandered from Rebecca, as if she had already outlived the experience of meeting a new face and hearing a new voice.

"Well, all I was going to say is," said Rebecca, rising to her feet at this warning signal, "that there was a very sick lady, sick and lame and old, that lived half a mile from our farm, and mother always had me go over and tell her the news once or twice a week. Mother says everybody ought to know what's going on, or they get lonesome. I've come away from that lady so I think I'd better take you in her place if you'd like to have me. There's such a lot happens down our way—awfully interesting things, too—that I could reel it off by the yard this minute, only you seem tired. And I've got two books of my own to lend you, so I'll come soon again if Aunt Miranda'll let me. Shall I?"

Rebecca's demeanor and tone were modest and innocent, but Miss Roxy felt herself in the grip of a master hand and feebly assented. "I don't mind if you do," she said, making an effort, and bringing her eyes back to the quaint, vivid little creature standing in front of her on the greensward. "Mebbe you'd liven me up."

"Oh, I would!" And Rebecca's tone was full of confidence. "Aunt Miranda says I'd stir up a cemetery; but that isn't a compliment. She doesn't like being stirred up; but I'd be real careful with you, being a stranger and not very well! Good-bye!" And Rebecca flew down the lane, her long, dark braids flying out behind her; while Miss Roxy, in spite of herself, rose to her feet by the rocking-chair and watched the child out of sight.

There were many meetings after that. Sometimes Rebecca took one of the other girls and they carried a bouquet of wild flowers to put in a tumbler on the kitchen table, or some apples or berries or nuts that they had picked on the road; but it was easy to see that one caller at a time was all that Miss Roxy fancied. She had very little to eat and very little fuel, though she was known to receive ten dollars a month from a nephew in Salem, so that Riverboro was comfortably sure that she could not starve; and as for firewood, the same nephew had a load, all sawed and split, deposited in her shed twice a year. These mercies gave assurance of existence if not of luxury; and, anyway, Riverboro could not waste its time over an incurably sad, cold, strange, silent woman like Roxanna Lyman, even if her family had been one of the best in former years.

Once Rebecca had knocked at Miss Roxy's door without receiving any answer and, peeping into the window of the downstairs chamber where she slept, had seen her lying on her bed with the gray shawl round her shoulders and a man's military coat over her feet. Like lightning the thought flashed through the child's mind: "Why not make a quilt for Miss Roxy?"

Patchwork had to be sewed, day in and day out, as was the custom. There were never enough sheets to oversew, and needlework was a Christian duty; therefore, patchwork—in and out of season. It was cheap, too. Nobody would mind if she and the other girls did extra work, begged their own pieces, and gave away the result for a Thanksgiving or Christmas present. The matter had been put before mothers and aunts, accepted, and scraps already collected. It only remained to choose the design.

So far so good; but that was not why Rebecca had tied pink tape on one of her pigtails—not at all! The mere notion of the quilt, a secret from all the village save the families involved—this had enchanted the five girls from the beginning; but something else was unfolded in the pine-grove meeting.

"You see," said Rebecca, "I was up to Miss Roxy's last night and she'd been crying. She cries 'most every day."

"What for, I wonder? She lives alone, so there's nobody to be cross to her," said Alice Robinson, who had troubles of her own.

"I guess it's the things that have happened in bygone days." (Rebecca had an incurably literary style in conducting meetings, and indulged unconsciously in nights of sentiment and rhetoric.) "Her mother and father died and her brother embezzled and Aunt Jane thinks that a gentleman played with her feelings and she's never been the same since."

"'Played with her feelings!' What's that?" inquired the unsentimental Emma Jane Perkins.

"Gave her hopes and then married another without saying so much as 'Boo,'" explained Rebecca.

"And there was a sister that did something dreadful, I don't exactly know what," hinted Candace darkly; "but she lives out West and Miss Roxy writes and writes to her, but she never answers."

"And she was the one Miss Rosy loved best of all," added Rebecca with a tear in her voice. "I asked her yesterday why she didn't sit in the kitchen with a window open and not in the little front entry that'll hardly hold her rocking-chair. She said if anybody should come any time suddenly she could get down the steps quicker to meet them. She never comes down to any of us, and I know it's the sister she means. Oh, dear!"

"Mother's awful sorry for her," was Persis's comment. "But everybody's kind of lost sympathy for her because she lives so out of creation, and it's so much work to get there."

"Well"—and Rebecca leaned toward the group confidentially—"I was thinking about it night before last as I was leaning over the gate. Now look the other way, girls, and don't laugh while I explain. All of a sudden I thought the pieces of our quilt will be scraps of dresses; why not take those that we, and all the other people, have had the loveliest times in? We could put them everywhere but round the edges, everywhere they'd touch Miss Roxy, I mean—on her neck and shoulders and arms and waist and knees. It'd be a quilt of happiness then; that's my idea!" And Rebecca waited with flushing cheeks and downcast eyes for the verdict.

There was a breathless pause of half a minute. Emma Jane seldom moved her mind in the presence of Rebecca, feeling that competition was impossible; still she was the first to break the silence with her customary ejaculation: "I think it would be perfectly elegant!"

Alice Robinson nodded her curly head responsively and said: '"Quilt of Happiness!' It sounds lovely, if we don't have to tell anybody grown up who would say it's silly."

"But can happiness strike into anybody?" inquired Candace, who, as the daughter of an Orthodox deacon, went to the foundation of things.

Rebecca was inclined to evade the direct question, inasmuch as her cherished idea had no real basis save one of pure sentiment.

"I can't help feeling that if we just collect scraps of happiness," she said shyly, "and cut and stitch and tack happiness into the quilt, all in secret, that Miss Roxy'd feel warmer in it, though, of course, she'd never guess why."

"Well," answered Candace, a little unconvinced but generously approving, "I think it couldn't do any harm to try."

"And there's just one person we might tell, for she'd understand and help us get the right pieces without telling our secret, and that's teacher." This suggestion from Persis Watson.

Rebecca clapped her hands delightedly.

"Now here comes the greatest piece of news, and I've been saving it up till the end! I did tell Miss Dearborn, last evening. I couldn't help it, because I couldn't be sure my idea wasn't foolish till one other person had heard it—and what do you think she told me? She's engaged to be married! Miss Dearborn's engaged to be married!"

This was chanted joyously while Rebecca skipped over the pine-needle carpet in circles and waved her arms triumphantly.

A chorus of "Oh!" and "Ah!" and "Who to?" woke the echoes.

Rebecca sat down again cross-legged and proceeded to the telling of a tale which from the beginning of the world has evoked the keenest joy in the narrator and the most rapt attention from the audience.

"How did she happen to tell you first?" asked Persis with a spice of envy in her tone.

"Just because I was there almost at the very identical minute when He went away."

"Who? Her beau?" inquired Alice, blushing to the roots of her hair.

"Yes; and she'd never tell Mrs. Bangs a thing like that!" (Mrs. Bangs was a lady of difficult temper with whom Miss Dearborn boarded as painlessly as possible.) "Don't you know how you feel when you're full to bursting with splendid news? That's how Miss Dearborn was. Do you remember the tall gentleman that came from Hartford two Saturday nights and went to meeting with her next day?"

"Yes!" in chorus. "Was that him?" (Miss Dearborn spoke and taught good English; but there are some things that human beings are powerless to teach—or learn!)

"Yes. His name is Robert Hunt, and teacher says he's an ab-so-lute-ly glorious man!"

"I didn't know there was any glorious men," said Persis. "I wisht I'd looked at him harder in meetin'. When they goin' to be married?"

"Not till next summer, though he's pleaded for an early date. (That's what she said.) She wants to teach here till the spring term's over so's to buy her wedding clothes, and aren't you glad we'll have her one more winter? Now, why doesn't somebody ask me what my news is?"

"Gracious! Is there any more?" they cried.

"Of course! Or what has all this to do with our quilt? Miss Dearborn just loved the idea of its being a quilt of happiness. She kissed me lots of times, and then she got up and looked in the glass and twirled herself round and held up her skirt and danced, and she had on the dress we like best—the pink delaine with the moss rosebuds on it—and she said, thinking it out as she went along: 'Rebecca, I've had so much happiness to-day I must give part of it away! When Mr. Hunt asked me to marry him this afternoon, I had on this dress. The waist is nearly worn out, but the skirt is as good as new. It's got six breadths in it, and it'll make a beautiful lining for Miss Roxy's quilt!' Then I said: 'Oh, that'll be lovely if you can spare it; but, darling Miss Dearborn—excuse me for speaking of it—they say that long ago a gentleman from Boston played with Miss Roxy's feelings and that's partly the reason she's so unhappy, and oughtn't you to be perfectly sure that Mr. Hunt isn't playing with yours before you give away any clothes?"

"That was very thoughtful of you, Rebecca," commented Persis approvingly. "And what did she say?"

"Oh! She fell into her rocking-chair and laughed and laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks. Then she stood up and took the dress right off her back and kissed the waist of it and—"

Emma Jane's china-blue eyes were popping out of her head. Her mind was hurrying to keep up with Rebecca's tale, but it seemed half a league behind as she ejaculated: "Kissed her waist? Wha' for?"

Rebecca looked embarrassed, both at the interruption at the high-water mark of her story and at the lack of comprehension. Also, it was a difficult action to explain in words; one whose meaning was to be felt with a blush and a heartbeat, but not dragged into the open and enlarged upon in bald speech.

"Just think it over, Emma Jane, for I can't talk about it," she said. "If you'd only read 'Ivanhoe,' as I wanted you to, or even 'Cora, the Doctor's Wife' or 'The Pearl of Orr's Island,' you'd know lots more about things."

"I know!" cried Candace triumphantly. "She'd had on the dress when he asked her to marry him, and she loved it."

"I can see how she'd kiss him, but I'd never 'a' thought of her kissin' a waist!" murmured Emma Jane obstinately.

"Well, she did!" Rebecca went on with heightened color. "She kissed it more'n twenty times as quick as lightning and hung it up in the closet, and then she laughed and cried some more and said: 'Oh, Rebecca, if you only knew how sure I am that Mr. Hunt isn't playing with my feelings; but I must tell him about your warning! Here, dear,' she said, rolling the skirt into a bundle, 'you'll have to piece the breadths to make them long enough, but feather-stitching will cover the seams and, oh! I want to give it away right now when it's just warm with gladness and let it go to poor Miss Roxy, who hasn't got a splendid man to love her and take care of her like my Robert!'—that's what she called him." Rebecca's voice broke; her eyes glistened; her cheeks glowed.

Indeed, the little group of budding women all felt vague thumpings and stirrings of something on the left side that had heretofore been silent. "Well, I declare!" "How perfectly elegant!" "Isn't it sweet of her!" "And now we've got our lining that's worried us the most." "And it's just fallen from heaven like the manna in the Bible!"

"And how wonderful to have a happiness lining all ready to put in our happiness quilt, the first happiness quilt that ever was! It simply must make a little difference in Miss Roxy's feelings!"

"And to think that we're the only ones in Riverboro to know that teacher's engaged to be married! It'll be all over the village to-morrow, and we knew it first! Oh, Rebecca, it's been the most wonderful meeting we've ever had, and when we see a pink tape on your pigtail again we'll run harder than ever!"

These and a dozen other excited comments fell from the girls' lips as they made their way home from the pine-grove meeting.

The collecting of the happiness pieces did not turn out to be a task of insuperable difficulty. The children themselves furnished a goodly number. There were some scraps of Rebecca's pink gingham, her first dress of the color she adored but had never hitherto possessed, having worn out her sister Hannah's clothes ever since she was born. Emma Jane gave bits of her Scotch plaid poplin, called the handsomest dress ever worn in Riverboro's younger set. There were squares from frocks in which Persis and Candace had received school prizes and Alice Robinson had worn in tableaux. Alice was always in tableaux on account of her pink-and-white skin and golden hair, and was always cast for "the angel," although she had a most uncertain disposition.

The minister's wife, confidentially consulted, had contributed the full sleeves and shoulder cape of the dress she "appeared bride in" the Sunday after her wedding.

"I had to walk up the aisle and sit in my pew all alone that summer, Rebecca, and I was only seventeen," she said. "Sometimes I thought it would be nice to be married to just a man that belonged to me only, and have him sit beside me in meeting; but then I remembered how grateful I ought to be that my husband belonged to God."

Aunt Jane gave two squares of the cherry-colored glacé silk that she wore when she danced with the Governor of Maine at an inauguration ball at Augusta.

Aunt Miranda never knew that the quilt had any sentimental notions worked into it or she would have thrown cold water on the entire proposition; but in her ignorance she looked over her piece-bag one rainy afternoon with Rebecca. Suddenly she chanced upon a bit of dun-colored stuff that resembled hair-cloth in texture.

"There!" she exclaimed. "That was the best dress I ever had! It wore me like iron! I put two braids on the bottom of it the fourth year and new under-arm pieces the next spring, and I believe it lasted me nine seasons. I never had so much comfort out of anything as that dress! It's a pleasure to look back upon!"

"Did you look nice in it, Aunt Miranda?" Rebecca inquired with interest.

"I don' know's I ever noticed," her aunt replied absent-mindedly. "I know it covered me up, an' that's what dresses are for, I guess."

"Can I have a piece of it and one of your gray cashmere, too?" asked Rebecca; and as she put it in her sewing basket she thought: "I wonder if Aunt Miranda never came any closer to happiness than that!"

I am afraid that from an artistic standpoint the quilt of happiness was not a very handsome one. The idea having been the most important thing in the working-out of the design, every conceivable kirjd of stuff had been employed—calico, gingham, silk, poplin, percale, alpaca, Henrietta cloth, delaine, velveteen, challie, and cashmere; but the squares had been combined with such loving care that the effect was gay and attractive, if a little bizarre.

At any rate, the very angels themselves might have been pleased to look down on the five bright heads—yellow, chestnut, auburn, and brown—that bent every day over their self-imposed task!

There were five lame middle fingers aching from the pressure of brass thimbles, and five forefingers pricked wkh needle marks, but there were no complaints.

Rebecca's energy flagged now and then, for long and monotonous tasks were not her strong point; and, if it had not been a quilt of happiness, her share in it might never have been accomplished. It was just a little girl's dream—rainbow-tinted, fanciful, baseless; but it danced in and out of the patchwork squares like a vagrant summer breeze, and somehow it danced through the heart, too, ripening and sweetening it.

And at last, in late November, there came a day of days when, in an empty chamber at Emma Jane's house (Miranda Sawyer had refused to have the girls bringing in dirt and carrying it up and down the stairs of the brick house), Mrs. Perkins and Aunt Jane stretched the quilt into its frame, suspended on the backs of four wooden chairs. Miss Dearborn, who grew prettier every day and came from the post-office in the afternoons all smiles and beams and dimples, had made the happiness lining herself and featherstitched the seams.

Mrs. Perkins, whose father had been a storekeeper, leaving her enormous riches in the shape of new goods, brought from her attic her contribution of rolls of sheet wadding.

Now the outside, the wadding, and the lining were held carefully in place by hands that were moist with excitement and responsibility, and the tacking of the three smoothly together with bright-colored worsteds proved to be the most difficult task that the girls had yet confronted.

There was a week's work in all this, and two or three afternoons when the binding of the four long sides was done; but, by dint of perseverance, the last stitch was put into the quilt on the day before Christmas, when Aunt Jane had prophesied New Year's as the nearest possible date of completion. The girls gazed at their work with uncontrollable admiration and reverence.

"I'm sick to death of it!" exclaimed Rebecca. "I love it to distraction, and I never want to see another as long as I live! How can anybody make 'em for fun? I could hug it, I'm so fond of it, and slap it, I'm so tired of it!" And the girls echoed her sentiments, though in less picturesque and vigorous language.

"If we give it to her to-day, she'll have something to be thankful for on Christmas Day," the girls decided. "We'll have to lug it up together, and let Rebecca go in with it, while we stay out in the road and wait."

"Don't say 'lug,' and let's go after dark," Rebecca suggested. "I believe I can open the door and put it down softly in, the entry with our letter; then I won't get thanked all by myself, which wouldn't be fair; and we can take turns going up to-morrow to hear what she says."

"Mother's going to send her a big plate of dinner," said Alice.

"Oh, joy!" And Rebecca took out the pink tape from her apron pocket and tied it on a pigtail.

"What is it?" the girls asked breathlessly in chorus.

"Why, once there was a very important paper that had to be sent to a certain king by one of his1 generals, and he stationed messengers ten miles apart all along the road from his camp to the king's palace. One man galloped for ten miles, got off his hot, steaming charger and handed the message to another man, who was all ready and waiting on a fresh horse. He galloped on to the next man, and so on. We'll do the same with Miss Roxy's dinner, each of us making believe it's horseback, and running like mad to give the basket to the next one. Then it'll get there piping hot!"

Christmas Eve fell cold and bleak, with a north wind and an uncertain moon. The girls put on mittens and hoods and, starting at six o'clock, whem it was quite dark, they carried the quilt as they walked, Indian file, along the frozen road. They met no one, just as they had planned, for as the affair had begun in secrecy, so it was hoped to end it. That was half the fun.

The Simpson cottage, with its yard completely filled with ramshackle vehicles and cast-off implements of every sort, was lighted by the effulgence of the tall banquet lamp that Rebecca and Emma Jane had earned as a premium for selling soap. It was the joy and pride of the Simpsons, although as drawing-room furniture it was accompanied only by a battered pine table and three rickety wooden chairs.

The girls admired its glow in passing, but kept on the dark side of the road and went stealthily by to avoid being hailed by Clara Belle Simpson. Midway up the lane four of them stayed behind a clump of young pines while Rebecca went on alone, staggering under the weight of the precious quilt.

It was cold and the teeth of the "waiters" chattered, but by dint of walking round and round the trees they succeeded in keeping fairly comfortable, as their blood was circulating with incredible rapidity and they were palpitating with excitement.

Soon Rebecca came running lightly down the lane. "Wait till we get into the road," she whispered, "and I'll tell you all, though everything went just right. Now come close and keep walking. I looked through the kitchen window and saw a lamp burning on the table, but nobody there. Then I opened the front door softly and went in on tiptoe, thinking Miss Roxy was upstairs or down cellar, and that I'd put the quilt on a chair with our letter. But the door was open into the kitchen chamber and I could see her there asleep. She hadn't gone to bed for good, I guess, because she wasn't undressed. She was lying there with her gray shawl and a black jacket over her shoulders, and her father's soldier coat over her feet. Then I had an idea!"

"Of course!" they laughed in chorus.

"So I crept in like a mouse, lifted off the coat and jacket ver-y softly, and spread the quilt over her!"

Here Rebecca's emotion quite overcame her. She stopped still in the road and clasped her hands dramatically, while the girls listened with devouring eagerness.

"Oh!" she said under her breath. "If only you had all been there! The quilt was beautiful beyond compare! Miss Roxy looked like a queen in it, spread all over everything—so big, so thick, so rich and bright! Her face was as white as her hair, and her eyes were shut tight. I tiptoed out, so afraid she'd wake up and have to thank nie. But it seemed to me I must go back once, to see if she had moved, and take one last look; so I crept round to the back and peeped in the window. Just then she put out her hand and I thought she'd feel something strange and open her eyes, but she didn't. She just pulled it up round her neck; then she snuggled down into it the way you do when you know you're going to sleep that instant minute and have a lovely dream. And then the moon came out and shone on her face, so I can't be perfectly certain, though I was looking hard, but I think, I really do think, that she smiled."

Here Rebecca stopped suddenly, turned her head away and swallowed a lump that appeared unexpectedly in her throat.

Emma Jane, who adored her, pressed her arm fondly but uncomprehendingly.

"You are the queerest!" she exclaimed. "I never saw anybody before who cried when she was pleased!"

Rebecca, all smiles again, dashed away the coming tear.

"I've told you before, Emma Jane," she said," that you'd know lots of things if only you'd read books. 'Cora, the Doctor's Wife' and 'The Pearl of Orr's Island' always cried when they were happy. I feel as if laughs and cries came out of the same spot inside of me!"

Rebecca was right and the moon told the truth. Miss Roxy had smiled, and she had dreamed. Dreams were rare occurrences in her experience, for her nights were as drab and colorless as her days. The dream carried her so far into the past that she was a child again; and the something warm that she felt about her neck was her sister's arm—the sister she loved best of all.