"Auntie," said Susie, who for some moments had been gazing thoughtfully in the fire, "I have been thinking how nice it would be if, when our quilt goes to the home missionary, all the interesting stories you have told us while we were sewing on it could go too. Then the children in the family would think so much more of it—don't you see? I wish there was some way for a great many more boys and girls to hear those stories."
"Why, that's just what Florence Austin was saying this afternoon," said Mollie. "She said she wished all those stories could be printed in a book."
"You hear the suggestion, Ruth," Mrs. Elliot said.
But Ruth smiled and shook her head,
"They are such simple little stories," said she.
"For simple little people to read—'for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' Think, Ruth, if, instead of one Eliza Jones 'making butterflies out of fennel-worms' next summer, and in that way getting at some wonderful facts far more effectively than any book could teach her, there should be a dozen, aria perhaps as many boys resolving, like Roy, to use kindness and patience instead of cruelty and force in their dealings with a dumb beast. But you know all this without my preaching. Ten times one make ten, little sister."
"If I thought my stones would do good," she said.
"Come, I have a proposition to make," said the minister's wife. "You shall write out the stories—you already have some of them in manuscript—and I will fill in with the doings of the Patchwork Quilt Society. Do you agree?"
And that is how this book was written.