"How bright and pretty your plants are, Mrs. Lankton!" said Hilda, trying to make a diversion. "No, Jack!—I mean Jenny! you will have to take that out again. See those long stitches! They look as if they were all running after each other, don't they? Take them out, dear, and make me some nice, neat little stitches, stepping along quietly, as you do when you have on those new shoes you were telling me about. Lizzie, I wonder what turns your thread so dark? See how white my seam is! What do you suppose is the matter with yours?"
Lizzie giggled and hung her head. "Forgot to wash my hands!" she muttered.
"That was a pity!" said Hildegarde. "It spoils the looks of it, you see. I am sure Mrs. Lankton will let you wash your hands in that bright tin basin. Vesta Philbrook, where is your violin?"
"Ma'am?" said Vesta Philbrook, opening her mouth as wide as her eyes.
"Your thimble I mean, of course!" said Hildegarde, blushing violently, and giving herself a mental shake. "Now go to work, like a good girl. Mary, here is the patchwork I promised you, already basted. See, a pink square, a blue square, a white one, and a yellow one. They are all pieces of my dresses, the dresses I wore last summer; and I thought you would like to have them for your quilt."
"Oh, thank you!" cried the child, delighted. "Oh, ain't them pretty?"
"Handsome!" said Mrs. Lankton, peering over the child's shoulder. "Them is handsome. Ah! I pieced a quilt once, with nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces into it. Good goods they was; I had good things then; real handsome calico, just like them. Ah, I didn't know what trouble was when I was your age, children. Wait till you've had lumbago, an' neurology, an' cricks in your necks so's't you can't stand straight, not for weeks together you can't, and your roof leakin', an' dreepin' all over yer bed, an'—"
"Why, Mrs. Lankton!" exclaimed Hildegarde. "Surely the roof is not leaking again, when it was all shingled this summer!"
"Not yet it ain't, dear!" sighed the widow. "But I'm prepared for it, and I don't expect nothin' else, after what I've been through. I was fleshy myself, once, though no one wouldn't think it to look at me."
"I wonder, Mrs. Lankton," began Hildegarde gently.