“Oh, indeed, indeed, indeed I will! Just as often as you’ll please to let me come! Oh, it is so nice here! I’ll be sure to come just as often as ever you will let me come!” exclaimed the child, heartily.
“That will be as often as ’ee likes,” said the old dame.
Then, assisted by David, she hastily cleared away the table, taking the dishes into the “lean-to” behind the cottage, there to remain until she could wash them up after the departure of the visitor.
Then she set herself to entertain the little lady.
She showed her all the few curiosities of the cottage—some strange South Sea shells that had been brought home by a sailor ancestor ages before, and which now decorated the low wooden chimney shelf; then the rusty old gun that had been carried by her own grandfather in the Revolutionary War; then some stuffed birds, some skeletons of strange fish, and some odd-looking pebbles from the beach.
Next she exhibited some of the small treasures of her chest of drawers—a curious patchwork quilt that had won the prize in a certain agricultural and industrial fair held at St. Inigoes many years before.
“And did you sew all these little pieces of colored calico and white cotton together with your own fingers?” inquired the child, with interest.
“Yes, dearie, I did.”
“Oh, how curious and how pretty! How I would like to do that! We have got ever and ever so many calico and cotton pieces in the scrap-bags at home! If I bring some over here, when I come again, will you show me how to cut the pieces into leaves, and flowers, and things, and sew them together like this?”
“Yes, little lass, I will teach ’ee with good will; for I do think it a merit to save up the scraps and turn them to good account, though they do tell me that now-a-days quilts are made by masonry, and sell cheaper than we could make ’em by hand. ’Ee sees, dearie, I use to make ’em to sell; but now I can’t get anybody to give me enough to pay for my work on ’em. So now I knit socks and mittens.”