'Why?' asked the little girl, for aunty seldom interfered in her arrangement of the quilt.
'It will look pretty, and match the other three squares that are going at the corners of that middle piece.'
'Well, I will,' and Patty sewed away, wondering at this sudden interest in her work, and why Aunt Pen laughed to herself as she put away the ammonia bottle.
These are two of the naughty little things that got worked into the quilt; but there were good ones also, and Aunt Pen's sharp eyes saw them all.
At the window of a house opposite, Patty often saw a little girl who sat there playing with an old doll or a torn book. She never seemed to run about or go out, and Patty often wondered if she was sick, she looked so thin and sober, and was so quiet. Patty began by making faces at her for fun, but the little girl only smiled back, and nodded so good-naturedly that Patty was ashamed of herself.
'Is that girl over there poor?' she asked suddenly as she watched her one day.
'Very poor: her mother takes in sewing, and the child is lame,' answered Aunt Pen, without looking up from the letter she was writing.
'Her doll is nothing but an old shawl tied round with a string, and she don't seem to have but one book. Wonder if she'd like to have me come and play with her,' said Patty to herself, as she stood her own big doll in the window, and nodded back at the girl, who bobbed up and down in her chair with delight at this agreeable prospect.
'You can go and see her some day if you like,' said Aunt Pen, scribbling away.
Patty said no more then, but later in the afternoon she remembered this permission, and resolved to try if aunty would find out her good doings as well as her bad ones. So, tucking Blanch Augusta Arabella Maud under one arm, her best picture-book under the other, and gathering a little nosegay of her own flowers, she slipped across the road, knocked, and marched boldly upstairs.