"I ran off, happy enough; and I have thought a great many times since, how kind it was in Sally and Judith to leave their work to do that baking for me. They were good sisters, certainly.
"I had a grand time that morning, going from house to house, asking my friends to my knitting-work party. Everybody was delighted; and everybody came, of course, and got there by two o'clock, or earlier.
"Mother left her quilting long enough to put marks with red worsted into each little girl's knitting-work.
"'There,' said she, 'at four o'clock I will come to see which has beat. I must be the one to judge; for there is a difference in your yarn,—some is coarse and some is fine; and we must be fair about it.'
"'O, yes'm,' said the girls; 'we want to be fair.'
"'Well, now I'll leave you,' said mother; 'and I hope you'll have a nice time.'
"And we did, for awhile. As we sat busy with our knitting, we heard now and then the tender bleating of a lamb in the barn,—how well I remember that!
"'That's my cosset,' said I. 'She hasn't any mother, you know. I'll show her to you, girls, when we get our knitting done.'
"Persis Russell 'didn't see the use of waiting,' she said. 'Why couldn't we run out and look, and right back again?'