not going to make herself unhappy
just because she had not the materials for making silk patchwork, as
Dell and the rest of her girl friends were doing. There were plenty of
other pleasures and amusements within her reach, and the one that she
enjoyed most of all came in her way, as it happened, the very next
morning.

[Illustration:
"OH, MRS. BURBANK! WHAT BEAUTIFUL PIECES!" CRIED LINDA.
"WHERE DID THEY ALL COME FROM?"]

Her father said to her, as he rose from the table after breakfast:

"Linda, would you like a ride, my dear? I am going to drive over to East
Berlin, and I will take you along, if you would like to go."

"_If_ I would like it! Why, papa, you _know_ there isn't _anything_ that
I like so much as a good, long ride with you!" cried Linda, dancing with
delight, as she ran off to get ready for the drive.

For it was indeed a "good long" ride to East Berlin--fifteen miles at
least--and the day was just as fresh and bright and lovely as a day
could be in the fresh and bright and lovely month of May.

The young grass was emerald green along the country roads, the apple
trees were all in sheets of bloom, hill-sides were fairly blue with
bird-foot violets, and sweet spring flowers were smiling everywhere.

Linda was so full of happiness that she could scarcely keep from singing
in concert with the birds that trilled and chirped among the trees on
either hand, as the pleasant road led through a piece of woodland.

But the woods came to an end abruptly where the trees had been cut off,
and where some men with ox-carts were hauling away the long piles of
cord-wood. Then there were fields of plowed ground on each side of the
road, and then a long stretch of rocky hills and old pastures, and
presently some houses came in sight.

Old, weather-beaten houses they were--a dozen, perhaps, in all. Two or
three had once been painted red, and still displayed some dark and dingy
traces of that color; but most of them were brown, and some had green
moss growing on their broad, sloping roofs--roofs which were two stories
high in front, but came down so low at the back that a lively boy might
reach them from the ground with very little effort, only the place did
not look as if anything so young or so lively as a boy had been seen
there for at least twenty years.

Still, it was a pleasant place. There were thickets of lilac and
mock-orange bushes around every house, and old-fashioned lilies and
roses growing half-wild