Miss Elliots Girls | Page 3

on one side and considered.
"Where could we meet, Aunt Ruth?"
"Here in my room, Susie, if mamma has no objection."
"Certainly not," Mrs. Elliot said; "but are you well enough to undertake
it, Ruth?"
"Yes, indeed, Mary; I shall really enjoy it."
"And would you cut out the blocks for us, and show us how to keep
them from getting all skewonical, like the cradle-quilt I made for
Amelia Adeline?"
Amelia Adeline was Susie's doll.
"Yes; and I could tell you stories while you were working. How would
that do?"
"Why, it would be splendid!" said the little girl. "There comes Mollie, I
guess, by the noise. Won't she be glad? Say, Mollie!--why, what a
looking object!"
This exclamation was called forth by the appearance of the little girl,
who had been heard running at full speed the length of the piazza, and

now presented herself at the door of Miss Ruth's room, her face flushed,
her hair in the wildest confusion, and the skirt of her calico frock quite
detached from the waist, hanging over her arm.
"Wasn't it lucky that the gathers ripped?" she cried, holding up the
unlucky fragment. "If they hadn't, mamma, I should be hanging, head
down, from the five-barred gate in the lower pasture, and no body to
help me but the cows. You see, I set out to jump, and my skirt got
caught in a nail on the post."
"O Mollie!" said her mother, "what made you climb the five-barred
gate?"
"'Cause she's a big tom-boy," said Lovina Tibbs, who had come from
the kitchen to call the family to supper. "Ain't yer 'shamed of yerself,
Mary Elliot?--a great girl like you, most ten years old, walkin' top o'
rail fences and climbin' apple-trees in the low pastur'!"
"No, I'm not!" said Mollie, promptly.
"Hush, Mollie," said Mrs. Elliot. "Lovina, that will do. Wash your face
and hands, Mollie, and make yourself decent to come to supper."
An hour later, seated in the hammock, the girls discussed their aunt's
plan.
"We'll have the Jones girls," said Susie, "and Grace Tyler, and Nellie
Dimock, she's such a dear little thing; and I suppose we must ask Fan
Eldridge, because she lives next door, though I dread to have her come,
she gets mad so easy; but mamma wouldn't like to have us leave her out;
and then, let's see--oh! we'll ask Florence Austin, the new girl, you
know."
"Would you?" said Mollie, doubtfully. "We don't know her very well,
and she dresses so fine and is kind of citified, you know. Ar'n't you
afraid she'll spoil the fun?"
"No," said Susie, decidedly. "Mamma said we were to be good to her

because she's a stranger; and I think she's nice, too--not a bit proud,
though her father is so rich."
"Well," Mollie assented, who, though thirteen months older than her
sister, generally yielded to Susie's better judgment; "let her come, then.
That makes six besides us, and Aunt Ruth said half a dozen would be
plenty. Sue, I think it's going to be real jolly, don't you?"
CHAPTER III.
THE STORY OF DINAH DIAMOND.
Miss Ruth Elliot was the minister's sister. And two years before, when
she came to live in the parsonage, an addition of two rooms was built
for her on the ground floor because she was an invalid, and lame, and
could not climb the stairs.
They were pretty rooms, with soft carpets, pictures on the walls, and in
the winter time the sun shining in all day at the south window and the
glass door. In summer with this door wide open and the piazza cool and
shady with woodbine and clematis, you would have agreed with the
little girls who made up Ruth Elliot's sewing circle, that first
Wednesday afternoon, that they were "just lovely!"
All were there--the Jones' twins, Ann Eliza and Eliza Ann, tall girls as
like each other as two peas and growing so fast one could always see
where their gowns were let down; Grace Tyler with curly black hair
and rosy cheeks; Nellie Dimock, a little dumpling of a girl with big
blue eyes and a funny turned up nose; Fannie Eldridge, looking so
sweet and smiling, you would not suspect she could be guilty of the
fault Susie had charged her with; and Florence Austin, whose father
had lately purchased a house in Green Meadow, and with his family
had come to live in the country. Last of all, the minister's two little
daughters, whom you have already met.
Ruth Elliot was sitting at a table covered with piles of bright calico
pieces cut and basted for sewing, and when each girl had received a
block with all necessary directions for making it, needles were threaded,

thimbles adjusted, and the Patchwork Quilt Society was