Patchwork | Page 4

it for one of newer design.
She was satisfied with her house, her brother Jacob was well pleased
with the way she kept it--it never occurred to her that Phoebe might
ever desire new things, and least of all did she dream that the girl
sometimes spent an interesting hour refurnishing, in imagination, the
same old sitting-room.
"Yes," Phoebe was saying to herself, "sometimes this room is vonderful
to me. Only I wished the organ was a piano, like the one Mary Warner
got to play on. But, ach, I must hurry once and make this patch done.
Funny thing patchin' is, cuttin' up big pieces of good calico in little
ones and then sewin' them up in big ones again! I don't like it"--she
spoke very softly for she knew her aunt disapproved of the habit of
talking to one's self--"I don't like patchin' and I for certain don't like red
and green quilts! I got one on my bed now and it hurts my eyes still in
the morning when I get awake. I'd like a pretty blue and white one for
my bed. Mebbe Aunt Maria will leave me make one when I get this one
sewed. But now my patch is done and I dare to go to Greenwald. That's
a vonderful nice walk."
A moment later she stood again in the big kitchen.

"See," she said, "now I got them all done. And little stitches, too, so
nobody won't catch their toes in 'em when they sleep, like you used to
tell me still when I first begun to sew."
The woman smiled. "Now you're a good girl, Phoebe. Put your patches
away nice and you dare go to Greenwald."
"Where all shall I go?"
"Go first to Granny Hogendobler; that's right on the way to the store.
You ask her to come out to-morrow morning early if she wants to help
with the berries."
"Dare I stay a little?"
"If you want. But don't you go bringin' any more slips of flowers to
plant or any seeds. The flower beds are that full now abody can hardly
get in to weed 'em still."
"All right, I won't. But I think it's nice to have lots and lots of flowers.
When I have a garden once I'll have it full----"
"Talk of that some other day," said her aunt. "Get ready now for town
once. You go to the store and ask 'em to send out twenty pounds of
granulated sugar. Jonas, one of the clerks, comes out this way still
when he goes home and he can just as good fetch it along on his home
road. Your pop is too busy to hitch up and go in for it and I have no
time neither to-day and I want it early in the morning, and what I have
is almost all. And then you can buy three spools of white thread
number fifty. And when you're done you dare look around a little in the
store if you don't touch nothing. On the home road you better stop in
the post-office and ask if there's anything. Nobody was in yesterday."
"All right--and--Aunt Maria, dare I wear my hat?"
"Ach, no. Abody don't wear Sunday clothes on a Wednesday just to go
to Greenwald to the store. Only when you go to Lancaster and on a
Sunday you wear your hat. You're dressed good enough; just get your

sunbonnet, for it's sunny on the road."
Phoebe took a small ruffled sunbonnet of blue checked gingham from a
hook behind the kitchen door and pressed it lightly on her head.
"Ach, bonnets are vonderful hot things!" she exclaimed. "A nice
parasol like Mary Warner's got would be lots nicer. Where's the
money?" she asked as she saw a shadow of displeasure on her aunt's
face.
"Here it is, enough for the sugar and the thread. Don't lose the
pocketbook, and be sure to count the change so they don't make no
mistake."
"Yes."
"And don't touch things in the store."
"No." The child walked to the door, impatient to be off.
"And be careful crossin' over the streets. If a horse comes, or a bicycle,
wait till it's past, or an automobile----"
"Ach, yes, I'll be careful," Phoebe answered.
A moment later she went down the boardwalk that led through the yard
to the little green gate at the country road. There she paused and looked
back at the farm with its old-fashioned house, her birthplace and home.
The Metz homestead, erected in the days of home-grown flax and
spinning-wheels, was plain and unpretentious. Built of gray,
rough-hewn quarry stone it hid like a demure Quakeress behind tall
evergreen trees whose branches touched and interlaced in so many
places that the traveler on the country road caught