"Please let Lucretia go,"
had no effect whatever.

"I don't approve of children being out nights," said Aunt Lucretia, and
Aunt Maria supported her. "There's no use talking," said she; "you can't
go, Lucretia. Not another word. Take your things off, and sit down and
sew your square of patchwork before supper. Almy, you'd better run
right home; I guess your mother'll be wanting you to help her." And Alma
went.

"What made you bring that Ford girl in here to ask me?" Aunt Lucretia,
who had seen straight through her namesake's artifice, asked of young
Lucretia.

"I don't know," stammered Lucretia, over her patchwork.

"You'll never go anywhere any quicker for taking such means as that,"
said Aunt Lucretia.

"It would serve you right if we didn't let you go to the
Christmas-tree," declared Aunt Maria, severely, and young Lucretia
quaked. She had had the promise of going to the Christmas-tree for a
long time. It would be awful if she should lose that. She sewed very
diligently on her patchwork. A square a day was her stent, and she had
held up before her the rapture and glory of a whole quilt made all by
herself before she was ten years old.

Half an hour after tea she had the square all done. "I've got it done,"
said she, and she carried it over to her aunt Lucretia that it might be
inspected.

Aunt Lucretia put on her spectacles and looked closely at it. "You've
sewed it very well," she said, finally, in a tone of severe
commendation.

"You can sew well enough if you put your mind to it."

"That's what I've always told her," chimed in Aunt Maria. "There's no
sense in her slighting her work so, and taking the kind of stitches she
does sometimes. Now, Lucretia, it's time for you to go to bed."

Lucretia went lingeringly across the wide old sitting-room, then across
the old wide dining-room, into the kitchen. It was quite a time before
she got her candle lighted and came back, and then she stood about
hesitatingly.

"What are you waiting for?" Aunt Lucretia asked, sharply. "Take care;
you're tipping your candle over; you'll get the grease on the carpet."

"Why don't you mind what you're doing?" said Aunt Maria.

Young Lucretia had scant encouragement to open upon the subject in her
mind, but she did. "They're going to have lots of presents on the
Christmas-tree," she remarked, tipping her candle again.

"Are you going to hold that candle straight or not?" cried Aunt
Lucretia. "Who is going to have lots of