f a
hair-covered trunk, close to the frosty window, and cutting the cloth in
the shape of a diamond, she sewed it together like a bag, filled it with
flannel, and hurriedly stitched on the faded green ribbon as a binding.

These rosebuds were a wonderful work of art to Debby, and one of her
great treasures; it would have been a "perfectly lovely cushion," she
thought, if the binding had only been new and the silk with which she
stitched it green instead of blue; and it was _so_ delightful to make
presents. Next year she would have a present for every one in the house;
she wondered why she had never thought of it before.

"And He feeleth for our sadness,
And He shareth in our gladness,"

sprang from her heart to her lips, and she hummed it over and over all
the three-quarters of an hour that she was at work. When the cushion was
finished, she held it out in different positions, trying to decide in
which it would look best when she should present it; and then she ran
down-stairs, possessed with such a variety of feelings that she could
scarcely speak when she opened the kitchen door.

Her mother was ironing, with her back toward her. Debby was glad that no
one else was there.

"I've made you a Christmas present, mother," she said, timidly, laying
it on the ironing-board.

"So _that's_ what you have been doing in the cold so long," her mother
answered, without pausing in her work. "Miss Holmes was a beautiful hand
with her needle, and how she did fuss over that! But you might just as
well have made it some other day; I was in no hurry for it. Put it in my
bureau-drawer, and come and mend these blankets your father has just
brought in. He thinks that we have so little to do that we can sew for
the horses right in the midst of everything."

So Debby laid the cushion away, glad that it had met with no worse
reception, and sat down in a corner near the stove to mend the coarse,
dirty horse-blankets. She usually disliked it exceedingly; but her
little attempt at making Christmas presents had so warmed her heart, and
her head was so full of the Fair, that it did not now seem so
uncongenial, and she was really surprised when the last stitch was
taken.

"You are almost as handy with your needle as your mother," her father
said, throwing the blankets over his shoulder to carry them to the barn.

"Now spring to, child, and set the table," her mother added, "and I'll
rest a few minutes, for I feel as if every bone