The old lady answered complacently, as she bit off a fresh needleful of thread and looked at her companion over her spectacles:
“Yes, dearie, I expect I am. I can do more’n that, too. I can keep up a powerful thinking.”
“About what, pray?”
“How that life is a patchwork quilt. All the colors of the rainbow, and some that any self-respectin’ rainbow would scorn to own. Some scraps so amazing homely you hate to put ’em in, but just have to, else there wouldn’t be blocks enough to square it out.”
“What sort of a scrap am I, Aunt Sally?”
“Huh! Fair to middlin’. Neither very light, nor very dark. You’d be prettier, to my notion, if you’d fetch a needle and thread and sew a seam with me, ’stead of swinging yourself dizzy out of pure laziness.”
“Now, Aunt Sally! I call that unkind! I hate to sew.”
“I believe you. You’ll never put a stitch where a pin will do. But, never mind. If everybody else sets out to spoil you, I don’t know as it’s my call to interfere.”
There was so much tenderness in the glance that accompanied these words that nobody could resent them; least of all the girl, who now sprang from the hammock and curled herself at the other’s feet.