s a fringe
of flowering geraniums in the window; the two women had to stretch their
heads over them.

"Poor little soul!" old Mrs. Emmons remarked further. "I pity that
child."

"I don't see much to pity her for," Ann returned, in a voice
high-pitched and sharply sweet; she was the soprano singer in the
village choir. "I don't see why she isn't taken care of as well as most
children."

"Well, I don't know but she's took care of, but I guess she don't get
much coddlin'. Lucretia an' Maria ain't that kind--never was. I heerd
the other day they was goin' to have a Christmas-tree down to the
school-house. Now I'd be will-in' to ventur' consider'ble that child
don't have a thing on't."

"Well, if she's kept clean an' whole, an' made to behave, it amounts to
a good deal more'n Christmas presents, I suppose." Ann sat down and
turned a hem with vigor: she was a dress-maker.

"Well, I s'pose it does, but it kinder seems as if that little gal ought
to have somethin'. Do you remember them little rag babies I used to make
for you, Ann? I s'pose she'd be terrible tickled with one. Some of that
blue thibet would be jest the thing to make it a dress of."

"Now, mother, you ain't goin' to fussing. She won't think anything of
it."

"Yes, she would, too. You used to take sights of comfort with 'em." Old
Mrs. Emmons, tall and tremulous, rose up and went out of the room.

"She's gone after the linen pieces," thought her daughter Ann. "She is
dreadfully silly." Ann began smoothing out some remnants of blue thibet
on her lap. She selected one piece that she thought would do for the
dress.

Meanwhile young Lucretia went to school. It was quite a cold day, but
she was warmly dressed. She wore her aunt Lucretia's red and green plaid
shawl, which Aunt Lucretia had worn to meeting when she was herself a
little girl, over her aunt Maria's black ladies' cloth coat. The coat
was very large and roomy--indeed, it had not been altered at all--but
the cloth was thick and good. Young Lucretia wore also her aunt Maria's
black alpaca dress, which had been somewhat decreased in size to fit
her, and her aunt Lucretia's purple hood with a nubia tied over it. She
had mittens, a black quilted petticoat, and her aunt Maria's old drab
stockings drawn over her shoes to keep the snow from her ankles. If
young Lucretia caught cold, it would not be her aunts' fault. She went
along rather clumsily, but quite merrily, holding her tin dinner-pail
very stead