now; and Nancy
Jane, she's layin' in the cemetery over to East Berlin, with her own
little girl buried 'long side of her," said the old lady, sighing. "But
they used to be called the best dressmakers there was anywhere round
these parts; folks used to come from as far off as Tolland County to
have their nice dresses made by the Burbank girls. Miss Polly Newcome
went to Washington the winter that her father was elected to the Senate.
She was a great beauty, Miss Polly was, an' they made everything of her
in Washington. But my girls had the makin' of all her new clothes, 'fore
she went. This was a dress she wore to a grand dinner-party that was
given to her father, Senator Newcome."

And the old lady picked out a scrap of marvelous brocade, with
silver-white roses on a wine-colored ground, and smoothed it on her
knee.

"This was the one she wore to the President's reception"--selecting a
bit of rose-colored satin, striped with sky-blue velvet; "and this,"
she continued, smoothing out a long strip of changeable silk in green
and ruby tints, "was another dinner dress. Here's a piece of plaid silk
that was made up for Squire Harney's wife, when she was goin' to Europe;
and here's a piece of Mrs. Doctor Thorne's dress, that she had made on
purpose to wear to a grand party over in Tolland."

This last was a good-sized square of bright yellow silk, with polka-dots
of mazarine blue.

Linda, looking at the gorgeous fabric with admiring eyes, exclaimed:

"I never saw such pieces in all my life! They _would_ make the loveliest
crazy quilt!"

"What kind of a quilt, my dear?"

"A crazy quilt," said Linda, laughing. "Haven't you ever seen one, Mrs.
Burbank? Fred says the person was crazy who first invented them; but I
think they're just as pretty as they can be. It takes a great many
pieces of silk, though, to make a bed-quilt, and some of the girls only
make sofa-pillows and such things."

"Oh, you mean patchwork. The land!" said Mrs. Burbank, "I used to make
silk patchwork more than sixty years ago. It was all the style then,
but I didn't s'pose they ever done it now."

"Oh, yes; it is all the style now," said Linda, with a smile.

"Do tell! I want to know if you like to piece patchwork?" said the old
lady, looking over her spectacles at Linda's girlish face, with its
gentle eyes and frame of soft, brown hair. "I declare for't, you look
just as my Nancy Jane did when she was your age! If you want them
pieces, child, yo