Ann Lizy was invited to spend the afternoon and take tea with her friend
Jane Baxter, and she was ready to set forth about one o'clock. That was
the fashionable hour for children and their elders to start when they
were invited out to spend the afternoon.
Ann Lizy had on her best muslin delaine dress, her best embroidered
pantalets, her black silk apron, and her flat straw hat with long blue
ribbon streamers. She stood in the south room--the sitting-room--before
her grandmother, who was putting some squares of patchwork, with needle,
thread, and scissors, into a green silk bag embroidered with roses in
bead-work.
"There, Ann Lizy," said her grandmother, "you may take my bag if you are
real careful of it, and won't lose it. When you get to Jane's you lay it
on the table, and don't have it round when you're playin' out-doors."
"Yes, ma'am," said Ann Lizy. She was looking with radiant, admiring eyes
at the bag--its cluster of cunningly wrought pink roses upon the glossy
green field of silk. Still there was a serious droop to her mouth; she
knew there was a bitter to this sweet.
"Now," said her grandmother, "I've put four squares of patchwork in the
bag; they're all cut and basted nice, and you must sew 'em all, over and
over, before you play any. Sew 'em real fine and even, or you'll have to
pick the stitches out when you get home."
Ann Lizy's radiant eyes faded; she hung her head. She calculated swiftly
that she could not finish the patchwork before four o'clock, and that
would leave her only an hour and a half to eat supper and play with
Jane, for she would have to come home at half-past five. "Can't I take
two, and do the other two to-morrow, grandma?" said she.
Her grandmother straightened herself disapprovingly. She was a tall,
wiry old woman with strong, handsome features showing through her
wrinkles. She had been so energetic all her life, and done so much work,
that her estimation of it was worn, like scales. Four squares of
patchwork sewed with very fine even stitches had, to her, no weight at
all; it did not seem like work.
"Well, if a great girl like you can't sew four squares of patchwork in
an arternoon, I wouldn't tell of it, Ann Lizy," said she. "I don't know
what you'd say if you had to work the way I did at your age. If you
can't have time enough to play and do a little thing like that, you'd
better stay at home. I ain't goin' to have you idle a whole arternoon,
if I know it. Time's worth too much to be wasted that way."
"I'd sew the others to-morrow," pleaded Ann Lizy, faintly.
"Oh, you wouldn't do it half so easy to-morrow; you've got to pick the
currants for the jell' to-morrow. Besides, that doesn't make any
difference. To-day's work is to-day's work, and it hasn't anything to do
with to-morrow's. It's no excuse for idlin' one day, because you do work
the next. You take that patchwork, and sit right down and sew it as soon
as you get there--don't put it off--and sew it nice, too, or you can
stay at home--just which you like."
Ann Lizy sighed, but reached out her hand for the bag. "Now be careful
and not lose it," said her grandmother, "and be a good girl."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Don't run too hard, nor go to climbin' walls, and get your best dress
torn."
"No, ma'am."
"And only one piece of cake at tea-time."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And start for home at half-past five."
"Yes, ma'am."
Little Ann Lizy Jennings, as she went down the walk between the rows of
pinks, had a bewildered feeling that she had been to Jane Baxter's to
tea, and was home again.
Her parents were dead, and she lived with her Grandmother Jennings, who
made her childhood comfortable and happy, except that at times she
seemed taken off her childish feet by the energy and strong mind of the
old woman, and so swung a little way through the world in her wake. But
Ann Lizy received no harm by it.
Ann Lizy went down the road with the bead bag on her arm. She toed out
primly, for she had on her best shoes. A little girl, whom she knew,
stood at the gate in every-day clothes, and Ann Lizy bowed to her in the
way she had seen the parson's wife bow, when out making calls in her
best black silk and worked lace veil. The parson's wife was young and
pretty, and Ann Lizy admired her. It was quite a long walk to Jane
Baxter's, but it was a beautiful afternoon, and the road was pleasant,
although there were not many houses. There were green fields and
flowering bushes at the sides, and, some of the way, elm-trees arching
over it. Ann Lizy would have been very happy had it not been for the
patchwork. She had already pieced one patchwork quilt, and her
grandmother displayed it to people with pride, saying, "Ann Lizy pieced
that before she was eight years old."
Ann Lizy had not as much ambition as her grandmother, now she was
engaged upon her second quilt, and it looked to her like a checked and
besprigged calico mountain. She kept dwelling upon those four squares,
over and over, until she felt as if each side were as long as the Green
Mountains. She calculated again and again how little time she would have
to play with Jane--only about an hour, for she must allow a half-hour
for tea. She was not a swift sewer when she sewed fine and even
stitches, and she knew she could not finish those squares before four
o'clock. One hour!--and she and Jane wanted to play dolls, and make
wreaths out of oak-leaves, and go down in the lane after thimbleberries,
and in the garden for gooseberries--there would be no time for anything!
Ann Lizy's delicate little face under the straw flat grew more and more
sulky and distressed, her forehead wrinkled, and her mouth pouted. She
forgot to swing her muslin delaine skirts gracefully, and flounced
along hitting the dusty meadowsweet bushes.
Ann Lizy was about half-way to Jane Baxter's house, in a lonely part of
the road, when she opened her bead bag and drew out her
pocket-handkerchief--her grandmother had tucked that in with the
patchwork--and wiped her eyes. When she replaced the handkerchief she
put it under the patchwork, and did not draw up the bag again, but went
on, swinging it violently by one string.
When Ann Lizy reached Jane Baxter's gate she gave a quick, scared glance
at the bag. It looked very flat and limp. She did not open it, and she
said nothing about it to Jane. They went out to play in the garden.
There were so many hollyhocks there that it seemed like a real
flower-grove, and the gooseberries were ripe.
Shortly after Ann Lizy entered Jane Baxter's house a white horse and a
chaise passed down the road in the direction from which she had just
come. There were three persons in the chaise--a gentleman, lady, and
little girl. The lady wore a green silk pelerine, and a green bonnet
with pink strings, and the gentleman a blue coat and bell hat. The
little girl had pretty long, light curls, and wore a white dress and
blue sash. She sat on a little footstool down in front of the seat.
They were the parson's wife's sister, her husband, and her little girl,
and had been to visit at the parsonage. The gentleman drove the white
horse down the road, and the little girl looked sharply and happily at
everything by the way. All at once she gave a little cry--"Oh, father,
what's that in the road?"
She saw Ann Lizy's patchwork, all four squares nicely pinned together,
lying beside the meadowsweet bushes. Her father stopped the horse, got
out, and picked up the patchwork.
"Why," said the parson's wife's sister, "some little girl has lost her
patchwork; look, Sally!"
"She'll be sorry, won't she?" said the little girl, whose name was
Sally.
The gentleman got back into the chaise, and the three rode off with the
patchwork. There seemed to be nothing else to do; there were no houses
near and no people of whom to inquire. Besides, four squares of calico
patchwork were not especially valuable.
"If we don't find out who lost it, I'll put it into my quilt," said
Sally. She studied the patterns of the calico very happily, as they rode
along; she thought them prettier than anything she had. One had pink
roses on a green ground, and she thought that especially charming.
Meantime, while Sally and her father and mother rode away in the chaise
with the patchwork to Whitefield, ten miles distant, where their house
was, Ann Lizy and Jane played as fast as they could. It was four o'clock
before they went into the house. Ann Lizy opened her bag, which she had
laid on the parlor table with the _Young Lady's Annuals_ and _Mrs.
Hemans's Poems_. "I s'pose I must sew my patchwork," said she, in a
miserable, guilty little voice. Then she exclaimed. It was strange that,
well as she knew there was no patchwork there, the actual discovery of
nothing at all gave her a shock.
"What's the matter?" asked Jane.
"I've--lost my patchwork," said Ann Lizy.
Jane called her mother, and they condoled with Ann Lizy. Ann Lizy sat in
one of Mrs. Baxter's rush-bottomed chairs and began to cry.
"Where did you lose it?" Mrs. Baxter asked. "Don't cry, Ann Lizy, maybe
we can find it."
"I s'pose I--lost it comin'," sobbed Ann Lizy.
"Well, I'll tell you what 't is," said Mrs. Baxter; "you and Jane had
better run up the road a piece, and likely as not you'll find it; and
I'll have tea all ready when you come home. Don't feel so bad, child,
you'll find it, right where you dropped it."
But Ann Lizy and Jane, searching carefully along the road, did not find
the patchwork where it had been dropped. "Maybe it's blown away,"
suggested Jane, although there was hardly wind enough that afternoon to
stir a feather. And the two little girls climbed over the stone-walls
and searched in the fields, but they did not find the patchwork. Then
another mishap befell Ann Lizy. She tore a three-cornered place in her
best muslin delaine, getting over the wall. When she saw that she felt
as if she were in a dreadful dream. "Oh, what will grandma say!" she
wailed.
"Maybe she won't scold," said Jane, consolingly.
"Yes, she will. Oh dear!"
The two little girls went dolefully home to tea. There were hot biscuits
and honey and tarts and short gingerbread and custards, but Ann Lizy did
not feel hungry. Mrs. Baxter tried to comfort her; she really saw not
much to mourn over, except the rent in the best dress, as four squares
of patchwork could easily be replaced; she did not see the true
inwardness of the case.
At half-past five, Ann Lizy, miserable and tear-stained, the
three-cornered rent in her best dress pinned up, started for home, and
then--her grandmother's beautiful bead bag was not to be found. Ann Lizy
and Jane both remembered that it had been carried when they set out to
find the patchwork. Ann Lizy had meditated bringing the patchwork home
in it.
"Aunt Cynthy made that bag for grandma," said Ann Lizy, in a tone of
dull despair; this was beyond tears.
"Well, Jane shall go with you, and help find it," said Mrs. Baxter, "and
I'll leave the tea-dishes and go too. Don't feel so bad, Ann Lizy, I
know I can find it."
But Mrs. Baxter and Jane and Ann Lizy, all searching, could not find the
bead bag. "My best handkerchief was in it," said Ann Lizy. It seemed to
her as if all her best things were gone. She and Mrs. Baxter and Jane
made a doleful little group in the road. The frogs were peeping, and the
cows were coming home. Mrs. Baxter asked the boy who drove the cows if
he had seen a green bead bag, or four squares of patchwork; he stared
and shook his head.
Ann Lizy looked like a wilted meadow reed, the blue streamers on her hat
drooped dejectedly, her best shoes were all dusty, and the
three-cornered rent was the feature of her best muslin delaine dress
that one saw first. Then her little delicate face was all tear-stains
and downward curves. She stood there in the road as if she had not
courage to stir.
"Now, Ann Lizy," said Mrs. Baxter, "you'd better run right home and not
worry. I don't believe your grandma 'll scold you when you tell her just
how 't was."