Chapter 11

THE QUILTING.

The patchwork quilt was finished. The pieces of calico Miss Ruth from week to week had measured and cut and basted together, with due regard to contrast and harmony of colors, were transformed into piles of gay-colored blocks; the blocks multiplied and extended themselves into strips, and the strips basted together had kept sixteen little hands "sewing the long seam" for three Wednesday afternoons. And now it was finished, and the quilting had begun.

Miss Ruth had decided, after a consultation with the minister's wife, that the girls might do this most important and difficult part of the business. She wanted the gift to be theirs from beginning to end--that, having furnished all the material, they should do all the work. How pleased and proud they were to be thus trusted, you can imagine, while the satisfaction they took in the result of the summer's labor repaid their leader a hundred-fold for her share in the enterprise.

Never was a quilt so admired and praised. Of all the odds and ends the girls had brought in, Ruth Elliot had rejected nothing, not even the polka-dotted orange print in which Mrs. Jones delighted to array her baby or the gorgeous green-and-red gingham of Nellie Dimock's new apron.

It took two long afternoons of close work for the girls (not one of whom had ever quilted before) to accomplish this task; but they did it bravely and cheerfully. There were pricked fingers and tired arms and cramped feet, and the big dictionary that raised Nellie Dimock to a level with her taller companions must have proved any thing but an easy seat; but no one complained.

Let us look in upon the Patchwork Quilt Society toward the close of this last afternoon.

"I was sewing on this very block," Mollie Elliot is saying, leaning back in her chair to survey her work, "when Aunt Ruth was telling us how Captain Bobtail's Brownie brought Tufty home.

"That pink-and-gray block over there in the corner," said Fannie Eldridge, pointing with her needle, "was the first one I sewed on. I made awful work with it, too; for when Dinah Diamond set herself on fire with the kerosene lamp I forgot what I was about, and took ever so many long puckery stitches that had to be picked out,"

"If I should sleep under that bed-quilt," said Sammy Ray (Sammy and Roy had been invited to attend this last meeting of the Society), "what do you suppose I should dream about?"

No one could imagine.

"A white horse and a yellow dog," the boy said, "'cause I liked those stories best."

"Yes," said Mollie; "and of course Nellie Dimock would dream about cats, wouldn't you, Nell? and Roy Tyler about moths and butterflies, and Florence Austin about birds, and I--well, I should dream of all the beasts and the birds Aunt Ruth has told us about, all jumbled up together."

"I shall always remember one thing," Nellie Dimock said, "when I think about our quilt."

"What is that, Nellie?"

"Not to step on an ant-hill if I can possibly help it, because it blocks up the street, and the little people have to work so hard to cart away the dirt."

"I ain't half so afraid of worms as I used to be," Eliza Ann Jones announced, "since I've found out what funny things they can do; and next summer I'm going to make some butterflies out of fennel-worms,"

"Roy says," Sammy began, and stopped; for Roy was making forcible objections to the disclosure.

"Well, what does Roy say?" Miss Ruth asked, knowing nothing of the kicks administered under the table.

"He won't let me tell," said Sammy.

"He's always telling what I say," said Roy. "Why don't he speak for himself?"

"Well, I never!" said Sammy. "I thought you was too bashful to speak, and so I'd do it for you."

"What was it, Roy?"

"Why, I said, when I owned a horse, if he should happen to shy, you know, I'd cure him of it just as that minister cured Peter."

Here there was a pushing back of chairs and a stir and commotion, for the last stitch was set to the quilting. Then the binding was put on, and the quilt was finished; but the September afternoon was finished too, and Lovina Tibbs lighted the lamps in the dining-room before she rang the bell for tea.

Lovina had exerted herself in her special department to make this last meeting of the Society a festive occasion. She gave to the visitors what she called "a company supper"--biscuits deliciously sweet and light, cold chicken, plum-preserves, sponge-cake, and for a central dish a platter containing little frosted cakes, with the letters "P.Q.S." traced on each in red sugar-sand.

When the feast was over, one last-admiring look given to "our quilt" and the girls and boys had all gone home, Susie and Mollie sat with their mother in Miss Ruth's room.

"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.

THE END

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End of Project Gutenberg's Miss Elliot's Girls, by Mrs Mary Spring Corning