e pieces by themselves, the pink and
the blue in separate piles, and the gray and dull colored also by
themselves.

Then taking needle and thread, she began basting them for sewing, a
white and colored one together. Oh, what a pile there was of basted
pieces, ready for me to learn overhand, or "over 'n over" as I used to
call it. I thought there was enough for a quilt. Should I have to sew
it all? I was in despair. But my grandmother was much pleased with the
show. "There!" she said, "when you finish those, I shall prepare some
more, and if you are industrious, you will have enough for a quilt by
spring, and then I will have a quilting and you can take home to your
mother a sample of the work you have done."

Somehow this picture did not allure me. I thought only of the weary,
weary hours of sewing I should have to do.

Well, that very day she sent to the store and had a thimble bought for
me, and that afternoon after school I began my quilt under her eye. I
must have a regular "stint," she said, and it was to be--at first--one
of those dreadful blocks, at least four inches of over-and-over
stitches! This was to be done the first thing after school, before I
could go out to play.

I won't tell you of the tears I shed over those blocks, of the bad
stitches I had to pick out and do over, of the many times I had to go
and wash my hands because of dirty thread. I thought my grandmother
the most cruel taskmaster in the world.

And the patchwork was not all. When she found that I could not even
knit, and that I was accustomed at home to read all the long winter
evenings before my bedtime at eight, she said at once that so much
reading was not good for me, and I must have some knitting. So she had
some red yarn bought, and some steel needles, and "set up" a stocking
big enough for my little brother, cheering me, as she thought, by
telling me that if I paid proper attention to it, I could knit a pair
of stockings for him before spring. My evening "stint" was six times
around the stocking-leg.

These two tasks, which my grandmother never failed to exact from me,
made life a burden to me. How I hated them! how naughty I was! How I
used to break my needles and lose my spool of thread, and ravel my
knitting to make a diversion in the dreary round, forgetting that all
these hindrances only prolonged my hours of labor, for every stitch of
my task must be finished before she would release me.

I brooded over my hardships till