Patchwork | Page 4

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 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