ses at school. His eager face clouded a little at his
mother's ominous silence. He shifted uneasily from one foot to
another, wondering why she did not speak. At last she said, slowly:

"But I had expected to pay you out of the turkey money, and I can't
get that before Christmas. I hadn't an idea you could finish before
then. And, oh, Johnny!" she added, sadly, "I thought it would be all
your own work. What do I care for a quilt made by Tom, Dick, and
Harry? I consented to spend so much money on it, because I thought it
would give you employment for six or seven weeks at least, and that we
would all set such store by a quilt that you had made with your own
little fingers,--every stitch of it!"

Johnny wriggled uncomfortably. It had been purely a business
arrangement with him. He could not understand his mother's sentiment.
There was another disagreeable pause. Mrs. Marshall gazed into the
fire with such a disappointed look in her eyes that Johnny felt the
tears coming into his own. Then his father and Rob and Rhoda, seeing
the humour of the situation, began to laugh.

"Oh, what a joke!" gasped Rhoda finally, holding her sides.

"Who on? I'd like to know," demanded Johnny, savagely, and threw
himself full length on the rug.

"I don't know what to do!" he sobbed, his face buried in his arms, and
his feet waving wildly back and forth above his prostrate body. "I
don't know what to do-oo! The boys are out there waiting for me around
the corner, expecting me to bring the money right away. I told them
_sure_ I'd bring it--that you promised--the very hour! I didn't know
it made any difference to you who finished 'em, just so they was
done."

"It was a misunderstanding, Johnny," said his mother, rising slowly,
"but I'll keep my promise, of course." She went up-stairs, and in a
few minutes came back with a five-dollar gold piece that she had taken
out of a little box of keepsakes. They all knew its history.

"Oh, mother, not that!" cried Rhoda. "Not the gold piece that
grandfather gave you because he was so proud of your leading the
school a whole year both in scholarship and deportment!"

"Yes, he gave it to me on my tenth birthday, just a little while
before he died. It was the last thing he ever gave me, and I have kept
it for thirty years as one of my most precious possessions." She was
rubbing the little coin until it shone like new, with the bit of
chamois skin in which it had been folded. "But dear as it is to me