“Tabitha Wells.”
[The Flag of Their Regiment]
Prudence looked up from her sewing. It was a pleasant place to work, out there in the morning sunshine that trickled through the big white pillars of the broad piazza. The wide street was overarched by the leafy branches of the spreading elms, but the houses that lined the streets were strangely empty of life.
It was in Philadelphia in the long, long-ago time of the Revolution. Prudence was a quaint, demure little Colonist girl. In all her eleven years she had known nothing save the daily routine of the simple home; the scouring of floors, the polishing of copper kettles and brass andirons and mahogany chairs, the making of huge loaves of bread and yellow butter and round cheeses, the bleaching of linen, and the patching together of gay blocks of colored cloth to make log-cabin and morning-star bed quilts.
Sometimes there was a quilting bee or donation party at the minister’s to attend. These, with their feasts of rich preserves and pound cake, and the children’s table set after the grown-ups had finished, were wonderful parties for Prudence. Usually, though, her days were very much alike. She helped her mother and studied her lessons from school books in queer wooden covers, and stitched her sampler when the studying was done.
COLONIAL SILVER
It was not a cross-stitch sampler, though, that Prudence was working on so busily now. Her needle flew in and out as she stitched together with even small stitches some long straight strips of red calico and white cotton. In her lap lay some star-shaped pieces of plain white cotton calico. The edges were neatly turned in and basted ready for sewing upon a square of blue calico cloth that Prudence had just cut.