She sat down, began again, did six stitches, and sighed. "They are such long sides!"
"I wonder what you would feel if you had all round a great sheet to hem. I did that when I wasn't much older than you are now."
Hecla was deeply interested. She put down her work, and gazed earnestly at Miss Storey.
"Weren't you much older than me, auntie?"
"I was just ten years old."
"Ah, but I'm only eight and a half. I'm 'xactly eight and a half."
"Eighteen months is not so very much difference."
Privately Hecla thought the difference enormous. She felt that at ten years old she would be very nearly grown-up. But she only asked, "What made you hem the sheet? Was it—for punishment?"
"No, not at all. The sheet had to be hemmed, and I wanted to help my mother."
Hecla considered the question with knitted brows. She felt convinced that her aunt must have been an extraordinarily good little girl, far superior to all little girls whom she had known, especially superior to herself. Hecla was most anxious to be good, and her great desire was to please everybody; but the idea of hemming even one side of anything so vast as a sheet—that simply lay outside the world of things possible!