"Well, she'll be worrying about you if you ain't home before long, and I
guess you'd better go," said Mrs. Baxter.
Ann Lizy said not another word; she began to move dejectedly towards
home. Jane and her mother called many kindly words after her, but she
did not heed them. She kept straight on, walking slowly until she was
home. Her grandmother stood in the doorway watching for her. She had a
blue-yarn stocking in her hands, and she was knitting fast as she
watched.
"Ann Lizy, where have you been, late as this?" she called out, as Ann
Lizy came up the walk. "It's arter six o'clock."
Ann Lizy continued to drag herself slowly forward, but she made no
reply.
"Why don't you speak?"
Ann Lizy crooked her arm around her face and began to cry. Her
grandmother reached down, took her by the shoulder, and led her into the
house. "What on airth is the matter, child?" said she; "have you fell
down?"
"No, ma'am."
"What does ail you, then? Ann Lizy Jennings, how come that great
three-cornered tear in your best dress?"
Ann Lizy sobbed.
"Answer me."
"I--tore it gittin' over--the wall."
"What were you gettin' over walls for in your best dress? I'd like to
know what you s'pose you'll have to wear to meetin' now. Didn't I tell
you not to get over walls in your best dress? _Ann Lizy Jennings, where
is my bead bag?_"
"I--lost it."
"Lost my bead bag?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"How did you lose it, eh?"
"I lost it when--I was lookin' for--my patchwork."
"Did you lose your patchwork?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"When?"
"When I was--goin' over to--Jane's."
"Lost it out of the bag?"
Ann Lizy nodded, sobbing.
"Then you went to look for it and lost the bag. Lost your best
pocket-handkerchief, too?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Old Mrs. Jennings stood looking at Ann Lizy.
"All that patchwork, cut out and basted jest as nice as could be, your
best pocket-handkerchief and my bead bag lost, and your meetin' dress
tore," said she; "well, you've done about enough for one day. Take off
your things and go up-stairs to bed. You can't go over to Jane Baxter's
again for one spell, and every mite of the patchwork that goes into the
quilt you've got to cut by a thread, and baste yourself, and to-morrow
you've got to hunt for that patchwork and that bag till you find 'em, if
it takes you all day. Go right along."
Ann Lizy took off her hat and climbed meekly up-stairs and went to bed.
She did not say her prayers; she lay there and wept. It was about
half-past eight, the air coming through the open window was loud with
frogs and katydids and whippoorwills, and the twilight was very deep,
when Ann Lizy arose and crept down-stairs. She could barely see her way.
There was a candle lighted in the south room, and her grandmother sat
there knitting. Ann Lizy, a piteous little figure in her white
night-gown, stood in the door.
"Well, what is it?" her grandmother said, in a severe voice that had a
kindly inflection in it.
"Grandma--"
"What is it?"
"I lost my patchwork on purpose. I didn't want--to sew it."
"Lost your patchwork on purpose!"
"Yes--ma'am," sobbed Ann Lizy.
"Let it drop out of the bag on purpose?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well, you did a dreadful wicked thing then. Go right back to bed."
Ann Lizy went back to bed and to sleep. Remorse no longer gnawed keenly
enough at her clear, childish conscience to keep her awake, now her sin
was confessed. She said her prayers and went to sleep. Although the next
morning the reckoning came, the very worst punishment was over for her.
Her grandmother held the judicious use of the rod to be a part of her
duty towards her beloved little orphan granddaughter, so she switched
Ann Lizy with a little rod of birch, and sent her forth full of salutary
tinglings to search for the bead bag and the patchwork. All the next
week Ann Lizy searched the fields and road for the missing articles,
when she was not cutting calico patchwork by a thread and sewing over
and over. It seemed to her that life was made up of those two
occupations, but at the end of a week the search, so far as the bead bag
was concerned, came to an end.
On Saturday afternoon the parson's wife called on old Mrs. Jennings. The
sweet, gentle young lady in her black silk dress, her pink cheeks, and
smooth waves of golden hair gleaming through her worked lace veil
entered the north room, which was the parlor, and sat down in the
rocking-chair. Ann Lizy and her grandmother sat opposite, and they both
noticed at the same moment that the parson's wife held in her hand--_the
bead bag_!
Ann Lizy gave a little involuntary "oh;" her grandmother shook her head
fiercely at her, and the parson's wife noticed nothing. She went on
talking about the pinks out in the yard, in her lovely low voice.
As soon as she could, old Mrs. Jennings excused herself and beckoned Ann
Lizy to follow her out of the room. Then, while she was arranging a
square of pound-cake and a little glass of elderberry wine on a tray,
she charged Ann Lizy to say nothing about the bead bag to the parson's
wife. "Mind you act as if you didn't see it," said she; "don't sit there
lookin' at it that way."
"But it's your bead bag, grandma," said Ann Lizy, in a bewildered way.
"Don't you say anything," admonished her grandmother. "Now carry this
tray in, and be careful you don't spill the elderberry wine."
Poor Ann Lizy tried her best not to look at the bead bag, while the
parson's wife ate pound-cake, sipped the elderberry wine, and conversed
in her sweet, gracious way; but it did seem finally to her as if it were
the bead bag instead of the parson's wife that was making the call. She
kept wondering if the parson's wife would not say, "Mrs. Jennings, is
this your bead bag?" but she did not. She made the call and took leave,
and the bead bag was never mentioned. It was odd, too, that it was not;
for the parson's wife, who had found the bead bag, had taken it with her
on her round of calls that afternoon, partly to show it and find out, if
she could, who had lost it. But here it was driven out of her mind by
the pound-cake and elderberry wine, or else she did not think it likely
that an old lady like Mrs. Jennings could have owned the bag. Younger
ladies than she usually carried them. However it was, she went away with
the bag.
"Why didn't she ask if it was yours?" inquired Ann Lizy, indignant in
spite of her admiration for the parson's wife.
"Hush," said her grandmother. "You mind you don't say a word out about
this, Ann Lizy. I ain't never carried it, and she didn't suspect."
Now, the bead bag was found after this unsatisfactory fashion; but Ann
Lizy never went down the road without looking for the patchwork. She
never dreamed how little Sally Putnam, the minister's wife's niece, was
in the mean-time sewing these four squares over and over, getting them
ready to go into her quilt. It was a month later before she found it
out, and it was strange that she discovered it at all.
It so happened that, one afternoon in the last of August, old Mrs.
Jennings dressed herself in her best black bombazine, her best bonnet
and mantilla and mitts, and also dressed Ann Lizy in her best muslin
delaine, exquisitely mended, and set out to make a call on the parson's
wife. When they arrived they found a chaise and white horse out in the
parsonage yard, and the parson's wife's sister and family there on a
visit. An old lady, Mrs. White, a friend of Mrs. Jennings, was also
making a call.
Little Ann Lizy and Sally Putnam were introduced to each other, and Ann
Lizy looked admiringly at Sally's long curls and low-necked dress, which
had gold catches in the sleeves. They sat and smiled shyly at each
other.
"Show Ann Lizy your patchwork, Sally," the parson's wife said,
presently. "Sally has got almost enough patchwork for a quilt, and she
has brought it over to show me," she added.
Ann Lizy colored to her little slender neck; patchwork was nowadays a
sore subject with her, but she looked on as Sally, proud and smiling,
displayed her patchwork.
Suddenly she gave a little cry. There was one of her squares! The calico
with roses on a green ground was in Sally's patchwork.
Her grandmother shook her head energetically at her, but old Mrs. White
had on her spectacles, and she, too, had spied the square.
"Why, Miss Jennings," she cried, "that's jest like that dress you had so
long ago!"
"Let me see," said Sally's mother, quickly. "Why, yes; that is the very
square you found, Sally. That is one; there were four of them, all cut
and basted. Why, this little girl didn't lose them, did she?"
Then it all came out. The parson's wife was quick-witted, and she
thought of the bead bag. Old Mrs. Jennings was polite, and said it did
not matter; but when she and Ann Lizy went home they had the bead bag,
with the patchwork and the best pocket-handkerchief in it.
It had been urged that little Sally Putnam should keep the patchwork,
since she had sewed it, but her mother was not willing.
"No," said she, "this poor little girl lost it, and Sally mustn't keep
it; it wouldn't be right."
Suddenly Ann Lizy straightened herself. Her cheeks were blazing red,
but her black eyes were brave.
"I lost that patchwork on purpose," said she. "I didn't want to sew it.
Then I lost the bag while I was lookin' for it."
There was silence for a minute.
"You are a good girl to tell of it," said Sally's mother, finally.
Ann Lizy's grandmother shook her head meaningly at Mrs. Putnam.
"I don't know about that," said she. "Ownin'-up takes away _some_ of the
sin, but it don't _all_."
But when she and Ann Lizy were on their homeward road she kept glancing
down at her granddaughter's small face. It struck her that it was not so
plump and rosy as it had been.
"I think you've had quite a lesson by this time about that patchwork,"
she remarked.
"Yes, ma'am," said Ann Lizy.
They walked a little farther. The golden-rod and the asters were in
blossom now, and the road was bordered with waving fringes of blue and
gold. They came in sight of Jane Baxter's house.
"You may stop in Jane Baxter's, if you want to," said old Mrs. Jennings,
"and ask her mother if she can come over and spend the day with you
to-morrow. And tell her I say she'd better not bring her sewing, and
she'd better not wear her best dress, for you and she ain't goin' to sew
any, and mebbe you'll like to go berryin', and play out-doors."