The next morning Anna Maria arrived, bundle in hand. With great pride
she spread out its contents. The girls were fairly dazzled with the
beauty of the pink calico. In the afternoon, at the beginning of the
last school hour, Miss Matilda said, "Anna Maria, have you brought the
things we spoke of yesterday?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Anna Maria, stepping up to the desk.

Miss Matilda examined them with satisfaction. "Now, Anna Maria, take
that brass-headed nail in your left hand, and the hammer in your right."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Do you notice that bar of wood along the wall, about five feet from the
floor?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now measure carefully, and find the spot exactly over the middle of
your desk; then drive the nail in."

Anna Maria obeyed. The hammering resounded strangely through the quiet
school-room. When this piece of work was over, Miss Matilda folded down
the pink calico, and marked out two long seams to be run and felled.
Anna Maria took the sewing to her seat, and stitched away complacently,
while the other girls fretted and growled over "that horrid grammar
lesson." When school was over, she brought the work to Miss Matilda, who
put it away carefully in her desk.

"Ah, teacher, do tell us what it is!" some of the girls exclaimed.

"I think you will see to-morrow," Miss Matilda answered, quietly.

The next afternoon Anna Maria resumed her work.

"I do believe it is going to be a bag," whispered one of the girls, who
was watching her.

"Why, yes, so it is," said another. "But what can it be for?"

"Do you think Miss Matilda could mean to have a Christmas grab-bag for
us?" asked a third.

"I don't know why she should," said a fourth; "I don't see that we have
been _so awfully good_ as all that."

But a bag undoubtedly it was. Half an hour before school was over, Anna
Maria had finished the string-case, and run the piece of pink alpaca
braid through it. The work was done. She walked to the desk
triumphantly, and presented it to her teacher. Miss Matilda examined it,
commended the sewing, and then handed it back to her.

"And now, Anna Maria," she asked, "do you know what this bag is for?"

"No, ma'am."

"Have you no idea?"

"No, ma'am."

"_It is to put your head in!_ In future I shall never reprove you for
talking. You may talk as much and as often as you please, but all you
say must go into this bag. When it is quite full of talk, draw the
string tight, so that not one word escapes, and