"Wilt thee tell thy father where thee hast been?"
The command was delivered in Patience's driest tone. Anna, inwardly tormented, outwardly vexed, burst into tears. The Quaker looked up in surprise.
Patience explained. Anna had left home at three o'clock to execute a little commission: she might well have been home in three-quarters of an hour and she had only made her appearance now.
"What kept thee, child?" asked her father.
"I only looked in at a shop or two," pleaded Anna, through her tears. "There were the prettiest new engravings in at Thomas Woakam's! If Patience had wanted me to run both ways, she should have said so."
Notwithstanding the little spice of impertinence peeping out in the last sentence, Samuel Lynn saw no reason to correct Anna. That she could ever be wrong, he scarcely admitted to his own heart. "Dry thy tears, child, and take thy tea," said he. "Patience wanted thee, maybe, for some household matter; it can wait another opportunity. Patience," he added, as if to drown the sound of his words and their remembrance, "are my shirts in order?"
"Thy shirts in order?" repeated Patience. "Why dost thee ask that?"
"I should not have asked it without reason," returned he. "Wilt thee please give me an answer?"
"The old shirts are as much in order as things, beginning to wear, can be," replied Patience. "Thy new shirts I cannot say much about. They will not be finished this side Midsummer, unless Anna sits to them a little closer than she is doing now."
"Thy shirts will be ready quite in time, father; before the old ones are gone beyond wearing," spoke up Anna.