"Yes, ma'am."
"Now measure carefully, and find the spot exactly over the middle of your desk; then drive the nail in."
Anna Maria obeyed. The hammering resounded strangely through the quiet school-room. When this piece of work was over, Miss Matilda folded down the pink calico, and marked out two long seams to be run and felled. Anna Maria took the sewing to her seat, and stitched away complacently, while the other girls fretted and growled over "that horrid grammar lesson." When school was over, she brought the work to Miss Matilda, who put it away carefully in her desk.
"Ah, teacher, do tell us what it is!" some of the girls exclaimed.
"I think you will see to-morrow," Miss Matilda answered, quietly.
The next afternoon Anna Maria resumed her work.
"I do believe it is going to be a bag," whispered one of the girls, who was watching her.
"Why, yes, so it is," said another. "But what can it be for?"
"Do you think Miss Matilda could mean to have a Christmas grab-bag for us?" asked a third.
"I don't know why she should," said a fourth; "I don't see that we have been so awfully good as all that."