Patchwork | Page 2

moment's tenseness. "I ain't goin' to sew
no more when it's so nice out! I want to be out in the yard, that's what I
want. I just hate this here patchin' to-day, that's what I do!"
Maria Metz carefully wiped the strawberry juice from her fingers, then
she stood before the little girl like a veritable tower of amazement and
strength.
"Phoebe," she said after a moment's struggle to control her wrath, "you
ain't big enough nor old enough yet to tell me what you ain't goin' to do!
How many patches did you make?"
"Three."
"And you know I said you shall make four every day still so you get the
quilt done this summer yet and ready to quilt. You go and finish them."
"I don't want to." Phoebe shook her head stubbornly. "I want to play
out in the yard."
"When you're done with the patches, not before! You know you must
learn to sew. Why, Phoebe," the woman changed her tactics, "you used
to like to sew still. When you was just five years old you cried for
goods and needle and I pinned the patches on the little sewing-bird that
belonged to Granny Metz still and screwed the bird on the table and
you sewed that nice! And now you don't want to do no more
patches--how will you ever get your big chest full of nice quilts if you
don't patch?"
But the child was too thoroughly possessed with the desire to be
outdoors to be won by any pleading or praise. She pulled savagely at
the two long braids which hung over her shoulders and cried, "I don't
want no quilts! I don't want no chests! I don't like red and green quilts,
anyhow--never, never! I wish my pop would come in; he wouldn't
make me sew patches, he"--she began to sob--"I wish, I just wish I had
a mom! She wouldn't make me sew calico when--when I want to play."

Something in the utter unhappiness of the little girl, together with the
words of yearning for the dead mother, filled the woman with a strange
tenderness. Though she never allowed sentiment to sway her from
doing what she considered her duty she did yield to its influence and
spoke gently to the agitated child.
"I wish, too, your mom was here yet, Phoebe. But I guess if she was
she'd want you to learn to sew. Ach, it's just that you like to be out, out
all the time that makes you so contrary, I guess. You're like your pop, if
you can just be out! Mebbe when you're old as I once and had your
back near broke often as I had with hoein' and weedin' and plantin' in
the garden you'll be glad when you can set in the house and sew. Ach,
now, stop your cryin' and go finish your patchin' and when you're done
I'll leave you go in to Greenwald for me to the store and to Granny
Hogendobler."
"Oh"--the child lifted her tear-stained face--"and dare I really go to
Greenwald when I'm done?"
"Yes. I need some sugar yet and you dare order it. And you can get me
some thread and then stop at Granny Hogendobler's and ask her to
come out to-morrow and help with the strawberry jelly. I got so much
to make and it comes good to Granny if she gets away for a little
change."
"Then I'll patch quick!" Phoebe said. The world was a good place again
for the child as she went back to the sitting-room and resumed her
sewing.
She was so eager to finish the unpleasant task that she forgot one of
Aunt Maria's rules, as inexorable as the law of the Medes and
Persians--the door between the kitchen and the sitting-room must be
closed.
"Here, Phoebe," the woman called sharply, "make that door shut!
Abody'd think you was born in a sawmill! The strawberry smell gets all
over the house."

Phoebe turned alertly and closed the door. Then she soliloquized, "I
don't see why there has to be doors on the inside of houses. I like to
smell the good things all over the house, but then it's Aunt Maria's boss,
not me."
Maria Metz shook her head as she returned to her berries. "If it don't
beat all and if I won't have my hands full yet with that girl 'fore she's
growed up! That stubborn she is, like her pop--ach, like all of us Metz's,
I guess. Anyhow, it ain't easy raising somebody else's child. If only her
mom would have lived, and so young she was to die, too."
Her thoughts went back to the time when her brother Jacob brought to
the old Metz farmhouse his gentle, sweet-faced bride. Then the joint
persuasions