Patchwork | Page 5

but mere glimpses of
the big gray house.
The old home stood facing the road that led northward to the little town
of Greenwald. Southward the road curved and wound itself about a
steep hill, sent its branches right and left to numerous farms while it,

still twisting and turning, went on to the nearest city, Lancaster, ten
miles distant.
The Metz farm was just outside the southern limits of the town of
Greenwald. The spacious red barn stood on the very bank of Chicques
Creek, the boundary line.
"It's awful pretty here to-day," Phoebe said aloud as she looked from
the house with its sheltering trees to the flower garden with its roses,
larkspur and other old-fashioned flowers, then to the background of
undulating fields and hills. "It's just vonderful pretty here to-day. But,
ach, I guess it's pretty most anywheres on a day like this--but not in the
house. Ugh, that patchin'! I want to forget it."
As she closed the gate and entered the country road she caught sight of
a familiar figure just ahead.
"Hello," she called. "Wait once, David! Is that you?"
"No, it ain't me, it's my shadow!" came the answer as a boy, several
years older than Phoebe, turned and waited for her.
"Ach, David Eby," she giggled, "you're just like Aunt Maria says still
you are--always cuttin' up and talkin' so abody don't know if you mean
it or what. Goin' in to town, too, once?"
"Um-uh. Say, Phoebe, you want a rose to pin on?" he asked, turning to
her with a pink damask rose.
"Why, be sure I do! I just like them roses vonderful much. We got 'em
too, big bushes of 'em, but Aunt Maria won't let me pull none off.
Where'd you get yourn?"
"We got lots. Mom lets me pull off all I want. You pin it on and be
decorated for Greenwald. Where all you going, Phoebe?"
"And I say thanks, too, David, for the rose," she said as she pinned the
rose to her dress. "Um, it smells good! Where am I goin'?" she

remembered his question. "Why, to the store and to Granny
Hogendobler and the post-office----"
"Jimminy Crickets!" The boy stood still. "That's where I'm to go! Me
and mom both forgot about it. Mom wants a money order and said I'm
to get it the first time I go to town and here I am without the money. It's
home up the hill again for me."
"Ach, David, don't you know that it's vonderful bad luck to go back for
something when you got started once?"
The boy laughed. "It is bad luck to have to climb that hill again. But
mom'll say what I ain't got in my head I got to have in my feet. They're
big enough to hold a lot, too, Phoebe, ain't they?"
She giggled, then laughed merrily. "Ach," she said, "you say funny
things. You just make me laugh all the time. But it's mean, now, that
you are so dumb to forget and have to go back. I thought I'd have nice
company all the ways in, but mebbe I'll see you in Greenwald."
"Mebbe. Goo'bye," said the boy and turned to the hill again.
Phoebe stood a moment and looked after him. "My," she said to herself,
"but David Eby is a vonderful nice boy!" Then she started down the
road, a quaint, interesting little figure in her brown chambray dress
with its full, gathered skirt and its short, plain waist. But the face that
looked out from the blue sunbonnet was even more interesting. The
blue eyes, golden hair and fair coloring of the cheeks held promise of
an abiding beauty, but more than mere beauty was bounded by the
ruffled sunbonnet. There was an eagerness of expression, an alert
understanding in the deep eyes, a tender fluttering of the long lashes, an
ever varying animation in the child face, as though she were standing
on tiptoe to catch all the sunshine and glory of the great, beautiful
world about her.
Phoebe went decorously down the road, across the wooden bridge over
the Chicques, then she began to skip. Her full skirt fluttered in the light
wind, her sunbonnet slipped back from her head and flapped as she

hopped along the half mile stretch of country road bordered by green
fields and meadows.
"There's no houses here so I dare skip," she panted gleefully. "Aunt
Maria don't think it looks nice for girls to skip, but I like to do it. I
could just skip and skip and skip----"
She stopped suddenly. In a meadow to her right a tangle of bulrushes
edged a small pond and, perched on a swaying reed, a red-winged
blackbird was calling his clear, "Conqueree, conqueree."
"Oh, you pretty thing!"