y to get a pattern--a
nice wide one she said, for little John's dress. He was the first baby,
and they fairly idolized him. This is it. I recollect the wheel and the
overcasting. It was--let me see--forty years ago, come this December.
Now, this little scallop is as popular as any" and she fished up
another, all full of needle-pricks. "Some ladies don't like much
embroidery, but they want a little finish. This one trimmed a set of
linen for Mrs. Senator Jones. It took me a good while to draw it. She
don't like this turn in the corner, so I made up something else. You
know I design my own patterns."

Then resisting the temptation to give the history of the rest of her
favorites, she put the box aside and turned her attention to the quart
bottle in hand, with its strip of muslin stretched tight around it,
over a bewildering collection of grapes and leaves. This was her method,
and the admiring sisters thought it perfect.

That night I teased John's mother into hunting up the dress, and there
was the identical pattern, edging the fine white cambric now yellow with
age. She was amused at my report of Miss Chrissy.

In my annual journeyings to the old town I never neglected "The Pears."
They always looked as if I had just stepped out for an hour, and come
back. The carpet did not wear out; the stove never lacked luster; the
tiny window-panes were always just washed, and the diligent fingers went
on just the same. They had a quaint way not easy to describe. When one
talked all the rest chimed in with little whispering echoes, to support
the assertion; and yet they did not seem to interrupt. They were to me
living wonders, so perfectly unspotted from the world, so earnest in
their pigmy money-making, and so thoroughly united, I felt consumed with
curiosity as to their inner life. They must sometimes put by the
quilting and the knitting and the patterns.

"How do you interest yourselves evenings, Miss Chrissy?" I asked, half
ashamed of the question.

"Oh, we read," she said, smiling her ready smile. "Yes, read," echoed
Miss Suffy and the rest. "We read Sunday-School books, and our Bible,
of course. Sometimes we don't go to bed till ten o'clock."

"Ten o'clock--o'clock--o'clock," assented the gentle voices. It was not
silly; the smiling faces all wore the sweet, simple look of guileless
childhood.

Miss Suffy's window overlooked a time honored graveyard, where gray
slabs were tottering. Next to her beloved patterns and t