After supper was cleared away and the visitors had gone Elizabeth brought her knitting and sat on the stoop step in the moonlight.
"Oh, don't knit!" cried Doris. "You look so tired."
"I'd like to go to bed this minute," said the child. "But last week I fell behind. You see, there are so many to wear stockings, and the boys do rattle them out so fast. We try to get most of the new knitting done in the summer, for autumn brings so much work. And if you will talk to me—I like so to hear about Boston and Madam Royall's beautiful house and your Uncle Win. It must be like reading some interesting book. Oh, I wish I could come and stay a whole week with you!"
"A week!" Doris laughed. "Why, you couldn't see it all in a month, or a year. Every day I am finding something new about Boston, and Miss Recompense remembers so many queer stories. I'm going to tell her all about you. I know she'll be real nice about your coming. Everything is as Uncle Win says, but he always asks her."
Doris could make her little descriptions very vivid and attractive. At first Elizabeth replied by exclamations, then there was quite a silence. Doris looked at her. She was leaning against the post of the porch and her needles no longer clicked, though she held the stocking in its place. The poor child had fallen fast asleep. The moonlight made her look so ghostly pale that at first Doris was startled.
The three ladies came out, but Elizabeth never stirred. When her mother spied her she shook her sharply by the shoulder.
"Poor child!" exclaimed Mrs. King. "Elizabeth, put up your work and go to bed."
"If you are too sleepy to knit, put up your work and go out and knead on the bread a spell. Sarah always gets it lumpy if you don't watch her," said Mrs. Manning.
Elizabeth gathered up her ball and went without a word.
"I'll knit for you," said Betty, intercepting her, and taking the work.