The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle

by Annie F. Johnston

The boys looked at the judge in open-mouthed surprise. They thought he surely must be joking, but nothing could be more serious or dignified than the way in which the white-haired old gentleman repeated his offer. So, after awhile, the boys succeeded in naming three business men to be the judges, who were satisfactory to all of them. They chose a grocer, a druggist, and a livery-stable proprietor, who were located on the same street with Stark Brothers.

"Ain't it the funniest thing you ever heard of?" said Chicky Wiggins, when they were once more on the street. "It'll be a long time to keep a secret, and I'll be aching to know what mottoes you kids have picked out. I'll bet it's just a trap to get us to read the Bible. He's one of your pious kind."

"Well, it's a trap worth walking into," answered Abbot, "if it's baited with something as tempting as a bicycle. The only trouble is that it will take so long to find a motto. The Bible is so full of them that a fellow'd feel like he ought to read it clear through, for fear of skipping the very one that might take the prize, and we have only a week to make a choice."

Abbot did not have to search long for his verse. He found it the second day, and chose it the instant his eye caught the sentence on the page. "Why, I've heard uncle say that a dozen times!" he exclaimed, as he read the familiar line, "'The hand of the diligent maketh rich.' That worked all right in uncle's case, and it will be an easy one to live up to, for, if I buckle down to it, and sell a whole lot of vegetables, I can prove my motto is the best." From that day Abbot began to feel a sense of ownership in the wheel in Stark Brothers' show-window.

Todd Walters worried nearly a week over his choice. It was the last week of school, and he sat with a little pocket Bible hidden between the covers of his geography many an hour when he should have been learning the rivers of Asia, or doing long sums in the division of fractions. Six days of the seven went by before he found a motto to his liking. He was lying stretched out on the old lounge in the tiny sitting-room that noon, waiting for dinner. Todd and his mother lived alone in this little cottage, and she was busy all summer making preserves and pickles and jellies to sell. It was their only means of support.

As the delicious odour of strawberry preserves floated in from the kitchen, Todd thought of his sweet-faced little mother bending over the steaming kettle, and wished he could tell her the secret of the prize wheel. "I wisht I could ask her for a verse," he said. "She must know pretty near the whole Bible off by heart. I never knew anybody that could say so many verses in a string without stopping."

Just then his eye fell on the old family Bible, lying in state on the marble-topped centre table, and remembering how boldly the big type always seemed to stare out at him when he used to look at the pictures in it, he got up from the lounge to walk across the room and open it. The leaves opened as of their own accord at a chapter in Proverbs, where an old-fashioned cardboard book-mark kept the place. It had been years since his grandfather's trembling hand had placed that book-mark there, the last time he led in family prayers, and his mother had never allowed it to be moved. So the book opened now at the chapter that had been read on that memorable morning, and Todd's eye caught the text at the top of the page: "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour than silver and gold."

"I'll take that," said Todd, softly, to himself, as he closed the great volume, "for I remember just what mother said about it when she explained it to me."

So that was the motto which found its way to Judge Parker's office in a sealed envelope, as he had directed they should be sent, with each boy's name signed to the verse of his choice.

It was not so easy for Chicky Wiggins to make a decision. To begin with, nobody in the cheap lodging-house that was his only home had a Bible, and he was ashamed to ask for one from the other boys. Still the daily sight of that wheel in Stark Brothers window finally nerved him to borrow a little old dog-eared Testament from the Swede who swept out the office. The young Swede had gotten it at a mission school he faithfully attended. There was no back on it, and several of the leaves were missing, but some reverent hand had heavily underscored some of the verses, and these were the ones that Chicky spelled out when no one was looking.