p to her own head. Jane was horrified, but rather slow to
wrath and equally slow in ingenuity. Sue looked a delicious Shaker with
her delicate face, her lovely eyes, and her yellow hair grown into soft
rings; and quite intoxicated with her cap, her knitting, and the general
air of holiness so unexpectedly emanating from her, she moved her little
hands up and down, as the tune rose and fell, in a way that would
have filled Eldress Abby with joy. Susanna's heart beat fast, and she
wondered for a moment, as she went back to her room, whether she could
ever give Sue a worldly childhood more free from danger than the life
she was now living. She found letters from Aunt Louisa and Jack on
reaching her room, and they lay in her lap under a pile of towels, to
be read and reread while her busy needle flew over the coarse crash. Sue
stole in quietly, kissed her mother's cheek, and sat down on her stool
by the window, marveling, with every "under" of the needle and "over" of
the yarn, that it was she, Sue Hathaway, who was making a real stocking.

Jack's pen was not that of an especially ready writer, but he had a
practical way of conveying considerable news. His present contributions,
when freed from their phonetic errors and spelled in Christian fashion,
read somewhat as follows:

Father says I must write to you every week, even if I make him do
without, so I will. I am well, and so is Aunt Louisa, and any boy that
lives with her has to toe the mark, I tell you; but she is good and has
fine things to eat every meal. What did Sue get for her birthday? I got
a book from father and one from Aunt Louisa and the one from you that
you told her to buy. It is queer that people will give a boy books when
he has only one knife, and that a broken one. There's a book prize to
be given at the school, and I am pretty afraid I will get that, too; it
would be just my luck. Teachers think about nothing but books and what
good they do, but I heard of a boy that had a grand knife with five
sharp blades and a corkscrew, and in a shipwreck he cut all the ropes,
so the sail came down that was carrying them on to the rocks, and then
by boring a hole with his corkscrew all the water leaked out of the
ship that had been threatening to sink the sailors. I could use a little
pocket money, as Aunt Louisa keeps me short. ... I have been spending
Sunday with father, and had a pretty good time, not so very. Father will
take me about more when he stops going t