Jane Baxter, and she was ready to set forth about one o'clock. That was
the fashionable hour for children and their elders to start when they
were invited out to spend the afternoon.

Ann Lizy had on her best muslin delaine dress, her best embroidered
pantalets, her black silk apron, and her flat straw hat with long blue
ribbon streamers. She stood in the south room--the sitting-room--before
her grandmother, who was putting some squares of patchwork, with needle,
thread, and scissors, into a green silk bag embroidered with roses in
bead-work.

"There, Ann Lizy," said her grandmother, "you may take my bag if you are
real careful of it, and won't lose it. When you get to Jane's you lay it
on the table, and don't have it round when you're playin' out-doors."

"Yes, ma'am," said Ann Lizy. She was looking with radiant, admiring eyes
at the bag--its cluster of cunningly wrought pink roses upon the glossy
green field of silk. Still there was a serious droop to her mouth; she
knew there was a bitter to this sweet.

"Now," said her grandmother, "I've put four squares of patchwork in the
bag; they're all cut and basted nice, and you must sew 'em all, over and
over, before you play any. Sew 'em real fine and even, or you'll have to
pick the stitches out when you get home."

Ann Lizy's radiant eyes faded; she hung her head. She calculated swiftly
that she could not finish the patchwork before four o'clock, and that
would leave her only an hour and a half to eat supper and play with
Jane, for she would have to come home at half-past five. "Can't I take
two, and do the other two to-morrow, grandma?" said she.

Her grandmother straightened herself disapprovingly. She was a tall,
wiry old woman with strong, handsome features showing through her
wrinkles. She had been so energetic all her life, and done so much work,
that her estimation of it was worn, like scales. Four squares of
patchwork sewed with very fine even stitches had, to her, no weight at
all; it did not seem like work.

"Well, if a great girl like you can't sew four squares of patchwork in
an arternoon, I wouldn't tell of it, Ann Lizy," said she. "I don't know
what you'd say if you had to work the way I did at your age. If you
can't have time enough to play and do a little thing like that, you'd
better stay at home. I ain't goin' to have you idle a whole arternoon,
if I know it. Time's worth too much to be wasted that way."

"I'd sew the others to-morrow," pleaded