rhaps the greatest cross which Julia had to bear, and the
one from which he stood in the greatest danger of getting into the
Patchwork School, was his Grandmothers. I don't mean to say that
grandmothers are to be considered usually as crosses. A dear old lady
seated with her knitting beside the fire, is a pleasant person to
have in the house. But Julia had four, and he had to hunt for their
spectacles, and pick up their balls of yarn so much that he got very
little time to play. It was an unusual thing, but the families on both
sides were very long-lived, and there actually were four grandmothers;
two great ones, and two common ones; two on each side of the
fireplace, with their knitting work, in Julia's home. They were
nice old ladies, and Julia loved them dearly, but they lost their
spectacles all the time, and were always dropping their balls of yarn,
and it did make a deal of work for one boy to do. He could have hunted
up spectacles for one Grandmother, but when it came to four, and one
was always losing hers while he was finding another's, and one ball of
yarn would drop and roll off, while he was picking up another--well,
it was really bewildering at times. Then he had to hold the skeins of
yarn for them to wind, and his arms used to ache, and he could hear
the boys shouting at a game of ball outdoors, maybe. But he never
refused to do anything his Grandmothers asked him to, and did it
pleasantly, too; and it was not on that account he got into the
Patchwork School.

[Illustration: JULIA WAS ARRESTED ON CHRISTMAS DAY.]

It was on Christmas day that Julia was arrested and led away to the
Patchwork School. It happened in this way: As I said before, Julia's
parents were poor, and it was all they could do to procure the bare
comforts of life for their family; there was very little to spend for
knickknacks. But I don't think Julia would have complained at that; he
would have liked useful articles just as well for Christmas presents,
and would not have been unhappy because he did not find some useless
toy in his stocking, instead of some article of clothing, which he
needed to make him comfortable. But he had had the same things over
and over, over and over, Christmas after Christmas. Every year each of
his Grandmothers knit him two pairs of blue woollen yarn stockings,
and hung them for him on Christmas Eve, for a Christmas present. There
they would hang--eight pairs of stockings with nothing in them, in a
row on th