on as usual. Gardening, berry-picking, and she helped
with the gooseberries, the briery vines she did not like. There were
jars of jam and preserves, rose leaves to gather, and all the mornings
were crowded full. Often in the afternoon she went up in the garret to
see Miss Eunice spin--sometimes on the big wheel, at others with flax on
the small wheel. She liked the whirring sound, and it was a mystery to
her how the thread came out so fine and even.

Elizabeth had taken the white quilt out of its wrappings, it did not get
finished the summer before. A neighbor had let her copy a new pattern
for the border that had come from New York. And she heard there had
been imported white woven quilts with wonderful figures in them.

"Then one wouldn't have to quilt any more. Shan't you be glad, Cousin
Elizabeth?"

"Glad!" She gave a kind of snort and pushed the needle into her finger,
and had to stop lest a drop of blood might mar the whiteness. "Well, I'm
not as lazy as that comes to, and I don't see how they can put much
beauty in them. You can change blue and white and show a pattern, but
where it is all white! Why, you couldn't tell it from a tablecloth."

It was warm up in the garret, and what with drying herbs, and the sun
pouring on the shingles, there was a rather close, peculiar air. Cynthia
stood by the open window, where the sweet summer wind went by, laden
with the fragrance of newly cut grasses and the silk of the corn that
was just tasselling out. The hills rose up, tree-crowned; white clouds
floated by overhead, and out beyond was the great ocean that led to
other countries--to India she thought of so often.

Oh, how the birds sang! She was so sorry Cousin Eunice had to sit and
spin, when there was such a beautiful world all around, and Cousin
Elizabeth pricked her fingers quilting. She heard her sigh, but she did
not dare look around. She had that nice sense of delicacy, rather
unusual in a child. But then she wasn't an everyday child.

"Cynthia," called Rachel from the foot of the stairs, "don't you want to
go out for a walk? They've been unloading the _Mingo_, and they have a
store of new things at the Merrits'."

That was the great East India emporium.

"Oh, yes!" She skipped across the floor and ran downstairs lightly.

"That child's like a whirlwind," exclaimed Elizabeth crossly.

"But we ought to be glad she's so much better. I was really afraid in
the spring we wouldn't have her long."

"Oh, the