"Yours will be too small, young master, I guess," said one of the commissioners.
"No," said Dick; "I've got a pretty good foot of my own, and Aunt Hitty will always knit my stockings an inch too long, 'cause she says I grow so. See here—these will do;" and the boy shook his, triumphantly.
"And mine, too," said Grace, nothing doubting, having been busy all the time in pulling off her little stockings.
"Here," she said to the man who was packing the things into a wide-mouthed sack; "here's mine," and her large blue eyes looked earnestly through her tears.
Aunt Hitty flew at her. "Good land! the child's crazy. Don't think the men could wear your stockings—take 'em away!"
Grace looked around with an air of utter desolation, and began to cry. "I wanted to give them something," said she. "I'd rather go barefoot on the snow all day than not send 'em any thing."
"Give me the stockings, my child," said the old soldier, tenderly. "There, I'll take 'em, and show 'em to the soldiers, and tell them what the little girl said that sent them. And it will do them as much good as if they could wear them. They've got little girls at home, too." Grace fell on her mother's bosom completely happy, and Aunt Hitty only muttered,—
"Every body does spile that child; and no wonder, neither!"
Soon the old sleigh drove off from the brown house, tightly packed and heavily loaded. And Grace and Dick were creeping up to their little beds.
"There's been something put on the altar of Liberty to-night, hasn't there, Dick?"