She folded up the great sheet carefully, making all the edges meet with painful precision. It took time. She had left the needle sticking in the unfinished seam—in the hundred-and-oneth stitch—and close beside it was a tiny dot of red to “keep the place.”
“Rebecca! Rebecca Mary!” Aunt Olivia always called like that. If there had been still another name—Rebecca Mary Something Else—she would have called: “Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary Something Else!”
“Yes'm; I'm here.”
“Where's 'here'?” sharply.
“HERE—the grape-arbor, I mean.”
“Have you got your sheet?”
“I—yes'm.”
“Is your stent 'most done?”
Rebecca Mary rose slowly to her reluctant little feet, and with the heavy sheet across her arm went to meet the sharp voice. At last the Time had come.
“Well?” Aunt Olivia was waiting for her answer. Rebecca Mary groaned. Aunt Olivia would not think it was “well.”