sted when she laid down the squares
to display the pattern.

"I suppose you knit?" remarked Miss Recompense.

"No. I don't know how. Betty showed me a little. And Aunt Elizabeth is
going to teach me to make a stocking. It seems very easy when you see
other people do it," and Doris sighed. "But I am afraid I am not very
smart about a good many things besides tables."

That honest admission rather annoyed Uncle Win. Elizabeth had said it as
well. For his part he did not see that reading the Bible through by the
time you were eight years old and knitting a pile of stockings was proof
of extraordinary ability.

"What kind of fancy work can you do?" asked Miss Recompense.

"I've begun a sampler. That isn't hard. And Miss Arabella taught me to
hem and to darn and to make lace."

"Make lace! What kind of lace?"

"Like the beautiful lace Madam Sheafe makes. Only I never did any so
wide. But Miss Arabella used to. Betty took me there one afternoon.
Madam Sheafe has such a lovely little house. And, oh, Uncle Win, she can
talk French a little."

He smiled and nodded.

"You see," began Doris with sweet seriousness, "there was no one to make
shirts for, and I suppose Miss Arabella thought it wasn't worth while.
But I hemmed some on Uncle Leverett's, and Aunt Elizabeth said it was
very nicely done."

"I dare say." She looked as if anything she undertook would be nicely
done, Miss Recompense thought.

"Betty was learning housekeeping when she went to Hartford. I think that
is very nice. To make pies and bread and cake, and roast chickens and
turkeys and everything. But little girls have to go to school first. Six
years is a long time, isn't it?"

A half-smile crossed the grave face of Miss Recompense.

"It seems a long time to a little girl, no doubt, but when you are older
it passes very rapidly. There are years that prove all too short for the
work crowded in them, and then they begin to lengthen again, though I
suppose that is because we no longer hurry to get a certain amount of
work done."

"I wish the afternoons could be longer."

"They will be in May. I like the long afternoons too, though the winter
evenings by a cheerful fire are very enjoyable."

"The world is so beautiful," said Doris, "that you can hardly tell which
you do like best. Only the summer, with its flowers and the sweet, green
out-of-doors, fills one with a kind of thanksgiving. Why did they not
have Thanksgiving in the summer?"

"Because