"Well, and I said, 'It's the books that will keep talking:' didn't I?"
"Yes. And I took you up beside me. But you was very ill after that, and it was long before you came back again after that first time."
This story had been gone over and over again between the pair; but every time that Mattie wanted to rehearse the one adventure of her life, she treated it as a memory that had just returned upon her. How much of it was an original impression and how much a rewriting by the tailor upon the blotted tablets of her memory, I cannot tell.
"Well, where was I?" said Mattie, after a pause, laying her hands on her lap and looking up at the tailor with eyes of inquiry.
"I'm sure I don't know, Mattie," answered Mr. Spelt.
"I was thinking, you know, that perhaps Poppie has her share of what's going on, after all."
"And don't you think," suggested her friend, "that perhaps God doesn't want to keep all the good-doing to himself, but leaves room for us to have a share in it? It's very nice work that you're at now—isn't it Mattie?"
"Well, it is."
"As good as dressing dolls?"
"Well, it's no end of better."