“I can see you,” said that lady calmly, “I guess you forget that big mirror opposite. But them faces you’re makin’ ain’t half so bad as this sewin’ of yours.”
The girls all laughed outright at Miss Bender’s calm acceptance of Bertha’s sauciness, and Bertha herself was in nowise embarrassed by the implied rebuke.
“There, child,” said Miss Aurora, smoothing out the seams with her thumb nail, “now try again, and see if you can’t do it some better.”
“Is your quilt nearly done, Miss Bender?” asked Patty.
“Yes, it is. I’ve got three hundred and eighty-seven geese finished, and four hundred’s enough. I work on it myself quite a spell every day, and I think in two or three days I’ll have it all pieced.”
“Oh, Miss Bender,” cried Bertha, “then won’t you quilt it? Won’t you have a quilting party while my friends are here?”
“Humph,” said Miss Aurora, scornfully, “you children can’t quilt fit to be seen.”
“Elise can,” said Bertha, looking at Elise’s dainty block, “and Patty can do pretty well, and as I would spoil your quilt if I touched it, Miss Aurora, I’ll promise to let it alone; but I can do other things to help you. Oh, do have the party, will you?”
“Why, I don’t know but I will. I kinder calculated to have it soon, anyhow, and if so be’s you young people would like to come to it, I don’t see anything to hinder. S’pose we say a week from to-day?”
The date was decided on, and the girls went home in high glee over the quilting party, for Bertha told them it would be great fun of a sort they had probably never seen before.