THE PATCHWORK QUILT
“Oh, rain!” Norma lifted her head from her pillow and groaned. “No
swim this morning, and Victor was just teaching me that new stroke!”
Norma hated rain. Grey skies of New England always put her into a bad
temper. But her little Belgian tent-mate was philosophical.
“We need ze rain for ze garden,” said Gilda, “and for ze spring of
wasser. Tante said, if it not rains in July, it be bad for us, the
spring running dry.”
“I wonder how the Golden Girl likes living in a damp tent!” thought
Norma with a grimace as she put on her wrinkled blouse and brushed
her unwrinkled hair. “It’s all very well for you crinkly girls,
Gilda. But do look at me!” She stared in the small mirror tragically.
“Pooh!” said Gilda, who was learning a few Americanisms. “Nobody care
about crinkles or wrinkles in a camp. Zat is what Tante said. I like
zat. Not so? Nobody mind also leetle damps.”
“_Leetle damps!_” Anne Poole found it more than a little damp as
she picked her way from rock to rock and around tiny lakes in the
path that led from the Fairy Ring to the bungalow. She wondered what
campers could find to do on such a dismal day, and regretted the
comforts of Idlewild; the pool room, the piano and victrola, the
library with its elaborately bound volumes. Anne had been the only
one who read books at Idlewild. Mr. Poole had put them in as a part
merely of the library furnishings. So the library at Idlewild had
been Anne’s almost undisturbed domain.
Though the Camp had turned out to be quite tolerable during the week
of sunny days, with so many pleasant new things to do, Anne wondered
what in the world would keep her from being bored by a deluge like
this. But to her amazement she found that _leetle damps_ did not
make much difference to the Round Robin. To be sure, Dick was the
only one who went for the morning swim. He declared it was drier in
the salt water than on land. To-day nobody was interested in going
to pick the wild strawberries which were growing sweeter and ruddier
every day in the meadows back of the Fairy Ring. But the boys went
about looking like fishermen in their yellow slickers and hats;
for the mail had to be fetched from the village and the milk from
Maguire’s farm, rain or shine. Cicely also put on her mackintosh
and went forth as usual to “botanize.” You cannot keep an English
girl indoors just on account of rain. Presently she returned,
rosy-cheeked, to tell about the lovely green rosettes that were
unfolding on the old spruce trees, and the wonderful color in the
deep woods. The surf on the rocks was splendid too, she said. So
everybody had to run out to see; everybody but Patsy, who looked very
complacent and fluffy, when they all returned dripping and draggled,
but jolly.
But there was also plenty to do indoors that kept the day from being
really “dull.” Housework! Anne had never imagined that there could
be any fun in the kitchen! But as Tante managed it, there was a
regular competition to see who should make the greatest hit, as it
came the turn of each girl to make a special dish for breakfast or
lunch or supper. And a rainy day was a fine undistracted time for the
amateur cooks to get ahead with their experiments in cake and pudding
and bread, fudge and cream peppermints.
A rainy day is good for basket-making, too; for the grass of sedge
or raffia is easier to work when it is a little damp. Beverly spread
herself in a window-seat of the living room and made great progress
on her basket, while some of the rest did their weekly mending, and
Norma read aloud. Nancy, however, retired to a dry quiet corner of
the bungalow loft, to finish the fairy story which had been waiting
for a wet day to be “transplanted,” as she called it. Then there were
always letters to write, if one had time.
But no one would have had time to spare at Round Robin even during
the Flood, Nancy declared; with a pair of lively Twins, a brown dog
and a white cat eager to be played with. A girl who loved children
and animals had no excuse for being bored. Anne soon had her hands
full, when the children found what wonderful things she could make
with scissors and paper. As a child left to her own resources most of
the time, Anne had learned how to amuse herself in these simple ways.
The time went so fast that she was amazed indeed when the tea-squad
demanded her help. Anne had already learned how to set a table very
nicely.
But the best part of a rainy day at camp--like the best part of many
a speaker’s address--is the end of it. By evening everybody in camp
is tired of being busy and of moving about. Everybody wants to keep
still and be amused.
After supper the boys heaped up a great fire in the fire-place, and
everyone drifted into her favorite seat or onto his favorite rug or
cushion. Anne Poole retired into a dim corner, where she could watch
the faces in the firelight without being watched herself. She was
still studying all these strangers critically, trying to see how
they could possibly be so different from the persons she had hitherto
known. And yet, as she had to confess to herself, they were not so
terrible after all; not nearly so uncomfortable to live with as she
had feared they would be.
“Let’s pop some corn!” said Eddie Batchelder, “mayn’t we, Mumsie?”
“Let’s tell stories,” suggested Norma. “Everybody tell a story but
me! You have got one all ready, Nancy. I saw you writing it this
morning!”
“It’s only just transplanted. It isn’t blossomed yet,” protested
Nancy.
“You tell a story, Tante,” suggested Beverly. “You haven’t told one
this year.”
“If everybody were here,” said Tante.
“We’re all here,” said Anne, counting around the circle, completed by
Doughboy and Patsy, curled up on the rugs.
“No. Nelly Sackett isn’t here,” several voices cried. “But it is
raining so hard I suppose she won’t come.”
But just then there was a tap on the door, and in pattered a little
figure in rubber boots and yellow slicker, with the Captain’s
tarpaulin hat drawn down over her curls which were kinky with
rain-drops. The Twins rushed upon her and seized her umbrella, and
lantern, while Dick undertook to relieve her of her rubber boots.
Tante asked her if she had not found it hard to keep the road on this
dark night, but Nelly said Oh, no; her feet seemed to know the way.
Whereupon Dick began to chant his favorite poem, accenting it as he
pulled at the reluctant boots:
‘My _feet_ they haul me _round_ the house,
They _hoist_ me up the _stairs_,
I _on_-ly have to _steer_ them and
They _ride_ me every_wheres_!
“There you are, Miss Sackett. Dry as the Ark!”
“I should think you-all would be afraid to come alone, Nelly,”
Beverly drawled. “Why, I wouldn’t go out of the house alone at noon;
let alone a dark night in the rain! Goodness! You are as bad as Nancy
with her moonlight rambles!”
Beverly’s mother had been Tante’s best friend, when they were girls
at school together. But the children of those two schoolgirls
had been born in places where the customs and conditions were so
different that it affected their whole lives. Tante’s children were
brought up never to be afraid to go anywhere, ever. Freedom is
always safest where everyone has always been free. So she answered
Beverly--“It’s different up North, Beverly. At least, it always has
been. Nelly isn’t afraid of the dark, are you? But I wonder you
didn’t prefer your cosy home on such a stormy night, my Dear.”
“I just had to come!” said Nelly. “Mother and Uncle Eph have gone to
meeting. I guessed there would be stories here.”
“Stories! Stories!” clamored Eddie, who was intently watching
Freddie’s small success with the corn-popper, now jiggling furiously.
“I think I shall have to bring out the Patchwork Quilt, to illustrate
my story,” said Tante. Nancy and the Twins began to giggle, and Hugh
whistled. They alone knew what their mother meant, for it was one of
the family jokes. Tante routed Norma and Beverly out of one of the
window seats in order to get a rolled-up bundle from the interior;
and presently spread it out upon the floor in the middle of the room.
It was a patchwork quilt of faded and old-fashioned calico squares,
set in a curious pattern; half-finished and with ragged edges.
“This is our family fancy-work,” said Tante. “I found it up in the
garret of our old house when I was a little girl. My mother said as a
tiny child she remembered it half finished. She added a few squares
herself in a half-hearted way, she said. It must have been begun by
some girl in our family before the Revolution, and has been growing
gradually ever since, square by square. But we are not much of a
fancy-work family, I fear. I meant to finish the quilt before I was
married. But I never did; just as my mother never did. So I gave it
to Nancy. She works on it sometimes, I believe.”
“I have made four squares in fifteen years!” laughed Nancy, “those
with my blue-and-white gingham in. But it takes a lot of time. I’d
rather write stories.”
“As family fancy-work it seems likely to last for a good many
generations,” said Mrs. Batchelder. “We use it now chiefly as a
notebook for stories.”
Seeing that Gilda looked puzzled, Freddie explained by putting his
thumb in the middle of a black square nearest to him, as the quilt
lay spread on the floor. “_That_ was a pirate story,” he said. “And
the blue one with stars on it was about a sea-captain and a stowaway.
And the little mousy-grey square was the girl-Pilgrim who came over
in the _Mayflower_ and was Mother’s own ancestress.” A howl from
Eddie interrupted him.
“Freddie! You’re burning up the pop-corn!” Sure enough. A dubious
smell reminded Freddie of his forgotten duty. The pop-corn had hopped
as fast as it could, when he forgot to shake it; but it could not hop
fast enough to keep its feet from getting scorched. Freddie looked
ruefully at the charred black men, and according to the rules of the
game, handed over the popper to Eddie, who took it importantly, and
after refilling it began to jiggle it with great care.
“Speaking of your little grey _Mayflower_ maid, Freddie,” said Tante,
“she had just five kernels of parched corn for her first American
meal, they say. I hope they weren’t so black as these of yours,
Sonny!” Tante was looking at the quilt thoughtfully, and Norma called
out: “Story! Story!”
“Well,” said Tante, “I am thinking of another sort of story--not that
one. Once upon a time there was a great, big Patchwork Quilt, 3000
miles wide, made up of ever so many little ‘squares’ of irregular
shape. Not one of them was really square; any more than are the
‘squares’ in our cities. Every square was itself made up of all sorts
of little patches and pieces and scraps. Some of the pieces came
from the North where it is cold; and some from the South where it is
hot. They were all different--no two just alike in color or material
or quality. Some came from the East with its strange wonder and
brightness; and some were of the West, rough and serviceable. There
were fine and precious squares, and others of flimsy or even shoddy
goods; many were coarse, and some were worn pretty thin. But pieced
together and backed and quilted, sewed with unbreakable thread, they
became strong and durable. It made a firm, warm quilt without any
rips or holes. The chief beauty of the quilt was this _wholeness_,
this keeping together in an unbroken pattern of squares.”
Some of the group were looking puzzled. “What does Mother mean,
Hugh?” asked Freddie who was leaning against his big brother’s knee,
critically watching his Twin’s efforts with the pop-corn. Gilda
listened eagerly for Hugh’s answer. “America!” he whispered under
his breath, and he looked across at Victor, who nodded, squaring his
shoulders. They had both fought for America, and loved her name.
“If this quilt had been all of one kind of material,” Tante went on,
“it would have been old-fashioned, like the other quilts, some of
which were very beautiful, but badly worn. Some of them were tattered
and rent into bits. You can see them on the map, painted one solid
color; but that doesn’t show how frayed they are at the edges where
they have been torn or snipped away by cruel shears.”
“‘_Shears_’ means wars,” explained Victor under his breath. “Cruel
they are! The old quilts are the old kingdoms of Europe, Freddie.”
“It’s a funny kind of story!” said Eddie dubiously, agitating the
popper, and not to be distracted by Freddie’s whispers.
“But this quilt I’m telling about,” went on Tante, “this new quilt
was made up of pieces out of nearly all the old ones; fresh,
bright pieces, most of them, the best and strongest part of the
many-colored counterpanes of the world. Every one of these pieces
was needed to make up the new pattern, sewed with the thread of old
tradition, law and order. Every patch had its own place in the great
getting-together, named a Union.”
“Why, the United States is a great Round Robin, isn’t it, Mumsie?”
cried Nancy. “I never thought of it before.”
“So it is!” nodded Victor. “And some day we shall have a still bigger
League, when all the nations of the world get together and make
their squares fit into a beautiful pattern, without losing each its
own shape.”
“That’s it!” Tante nodded. “The whole world will not be _free_
until it is _bound together_; bound by something besides cables and
railroads and wireless.”
Gilda was bending over the quilt studying it eagerly. “Zere is a
square of _La Belgique_!” she cried, pointing to a patch of black,
red, and yellow. “Hurrah for brave Belgium!” cried Dick. “We need her
pluck that saved the world.”
“And there is a bit of Italy,” said Norma, laying a finger on a
cornerwise patch of red and green, with white between.
“Mother had a dress of that pretty print,” interpolated Tante. “How
Italy does bring brightness everywhere! And there is the tricolor of
France. The blue and red are a little faded, Victor, because France
with her fine gifts has been here in our quilt a long time; among the
very first. French sailors, Norse and Icelandic, all came to America
before the Spanish named it and the English mapped it.”
“My grandmother was French,” said Nelly Sackett. “She came from
Canada.”
“I am part Spanish,” said Dick. “I guess that’s why I am so much
interested in pirates. I’m a regular Patchwork Quilt myself! I’m part
Irish and part Dutch and part Swedish, too. They all had a hand in
building America.”
“You’re an old Hyphen!” laughed Hugh. “It’s the Hyphens who make most
of the trouble in this country. They think more about the land from
which their ancestors came than about this one that claims their
whole allegiance.”
“Hyphen yourself!” retorted Dick. “You think a lot more about
ancestors than I do. I’m a hundred percent. American, I am; though I
do come from the opposite side of the Continent, 3000 miles from the
Hub. And anyone who says I’m not had better look out! If I had been a
few years older I’d have been a war-veteran too, with a brass star to
make me feel smart. Or maybe I’d have been a dead hero, with a medal!”
Tante hastened to soothe Dick’s troubled spirit, saying that Hugh
was only joking when he spoke of the hyphen. For nearly everybody in
this country has some foreign blood in his veins, of which he ought
to be proud, unless it makes him the less American in loyalty. Then
to change the subject Tante pointed out in the quilt the colors that
might represent Poland with its gifts of music; the blue and white
of Greece, with its tradition of beauty. In one square she saw the
faith of the Jews, loyal to what they held true and pure; in another
was Armenian patience and skill of hand. This purple suggested the
heather of Scotland, thrift and grit and honesty on which America had
builded firm structures. A bright pink square she declared must be
from Bohemia, the home of fairy-tales. And so on. What would America
do without all these gifts from the older lands?
“This looks like a green English meadow,” said Cicely picking out a
vivid square.
“What are _we_, Mother?” asked Nancy presently, “we who are just
Yankees and nothing else, since we left off being English one Fourth
of July?”
“I think the tiny patch of greenish-grey represents us, Nancy,”
laughed her mother. “English with a difference. There isn’t so
conspicuously much of us in the patchwork, for the brighter colors
crowd close about us. But you see a lot of squares have grey in the
background, with polka dots and checks, stripes, figures, invisible
brocade, and changeable effects. The Yankee spirit is pretty well
scattered over the old quilt from border to border. We furnished a
good deal of the thread that sewed the squares together, too.
“Well, my part of the story is done,” finished Tante. “You have all
helped to tell it. But the quilt is full of many more thrilling
tales, I know.”
“Dick is crazy to tell one,” said Beverly mischievously.
“Well, I know a story that might be a western square of the quilt,”
said Dick modestly. “It’s very short and it’s very true. Father told
it to me.”
“Let’s hear it, Dick,” said Tante. And looking sly, Dick began.
“Well, you know my father’s grandfather and grandmother started
out West from New England early in the game. I guess they got tired
of hearing Hugh’s great-grandfather tell about the doings of _his_
great-grandfather who came over in the _Mayflower_! Well, they
traveled the way the pioneers did, in a prairie schooner, you know--a
big wagon drawn by oxen, with all their furniture and ploughs and
pigs and chickens aboard; besides a lot of kids. That’s how they went
all the way across the country; because there weren’t any railroads,
of course. They had a terrible time. There were wolves and Indians,
and floods on the great rivers. One time the food gave out. And they
couldn’t find water for days. Some of them were taken sick with a
fever, and the littlest baby died. They buried him out in the middle
of the prairie, and nobody knows where his grave is to this day. But
I think it was somewhere near Chicago, Anne.”
“Well?” said Nancy. “Is that all the story?”
“Isn’t that enough?” asked Dick pretending to be hurt. “It’s the
history of my patriotic ancestors.”
“But what’s the point?” asked Victor poking Reddy in the ribs.
“The point is,” said Dick, getting to his feet ready to make a hasty
retreat to his tent--“that I am descended from that little kid who
died!”
The uproar that followed this anti-climax ended the story-telling
for the evening. Nelly Sackett refused to let Reddy go home with her
after such a fake ending to a real story. Instead it was Victor who
had that honor, and the two departed under one umbrella to the tune
of “_Seeing Nelly Home_,” chorused by the Round Robin and derisive
Dick.