Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

“ Jenny laughed again; the sweetest, most tuneful laugh in the world; one that she seldom used nowadays but had kept over from her long-ago youth. What a droll stranger! And how much more interesting he would be in the intervals of sawing and splitting wood, than old George Gibson.
"It is too ridiculous that you should have seen the milk pans and noticed the shingles. I am going to have the roof fixed next spring if I live. Father saved up money for the stock but—but, I had to use it in a long illness."
"Yes, yes!" interrupted the stranger. "It beats all how that runs through life! ”

“ So far so good; but that was not why Rebecca had tied pink tape on one of her pigtails—not at all! The mere notion of the quilt, a secret from all the village save the families involved—this had enchanted the five girls from the beginning; but something else was unfolded in the pine-grove meeting.
"You see," said Rebecca, "I was up to Miss Roxy's last night and she'd been crying. She cries 'most every day."
"What for, I wonder? She lives alone, so there's nobody to be cross to her," said Alice Robinson, who had troubles of her own. ”

“ Why don't you speak? Aren't you surprised?"
"I would 'a' been," said the boy, '"cept that Alfonso and the postmistress both said it would turn out that way; but Mother stood up for Jenny; she said it wouldn't."
"That's what all the women will have said," laughed Rufus.
"Well, all the men will say I jumped at you, so accounts will be square!" and Jenny smiled triumphantly back at Rufus, all blushes and confusion, her heart beating like a wild bird in her breast. "Go, Rufus, please," she said in a low tone, "and take Alfinso. I want to be alone with myself and get used to—happiness." ”

“ I've never done any housework, you know, Matthew."
Oh! how fragile, how plaintive, how in need of all a man's strength she looked in the moonlight!
"Why, Undine, do you s'pose I'd let you spoil your pretty hands with rough work? I'll always be there to stand between you and the hard parts, and you shall have a hired girl to wait on you every minute of the day. Besides, you don't know the improvements I'm going to make in my premises. The house is going to beat anything there is in Riverboro or Edgewood. While I'm gettin' ready for you, Undine, won't you be gettin' ready for me?" ”

“ Rebecca was inclined to evade the direct question, inasmuch as her cherished idea had no real basis save one of pure sentiment.
"I can't help feeling that if we just collect scraps of happiness," she said shyly, "and cut and stitch and tack happiness into the quilt, all in secret, that Miss Roxy'd feel warmer in it, though, of course, she'd never guess why." ”

“ Tommy Mixter, aged twelve, at this moment the life and soul of a clump of small boys on the loafers' bench at the Riverboro end of the bridge, knew Undine Berry better than Matthew Milliken did, but Tommy was too young to be smitten by feminine beauty, and he was a keen judge of character. ”

“ Can any parlor in the world beat a kitchen for comfort when it's rigged out and kept like yours! (No, puss, I wouldn't have you move for the world, even if you offered to! I'll take a wooden chair!) "
"The cat is spoiled," said Jenny, "and you look tired. You ought not to be doing rough work or you won't get to be yourself again."
"I'm myself, right enough; in fact I never was so much myself since I was born. I'm not tired; the sight of you and this kitchen rests me clean through to the bone."
Jenny changed color, but studied the crochet pattern with renewed care. ”

“ Matthew Milliken is one thing," thought Undine as she moved her chair out of sight of the young gardener, who was doing more gazing than weeding, "but what would they say at home in Greenford if I married a farmer in a one-horse village? I wonder if he'd be able to keep a hired girl for me. If I had to cook three meals a day and wash dishes the rest of the time, I might as well teach school, though goodness knows that's a dog's life!—I'd like to put these compositions in the stove and set a match to them! ”

“ Ask the red-haired, freckled one (his name is Alfinso) if he'll come up this afternoon and help you, for five cents. He'll hold the ladder, pick up the shingles or commit any crime if you just tell him that Jenny'll have fresh doughnuts for you and him at supper-time. Don't ask Alfonso, the dark-haired twin; he doesn't like work and doesn't like doughnuts. ”

“ All of a sudden I thought the pieces of our quilt will be scraps of dresses; why not take those that we, and all the other people, have had the loveliest times in? We could put them everywhere but round the edges, everywhere they'd touch Miss Roxy, I mean—on her neck and shoulders and arms and waist and knees. It'd be a quilt of happiness then; that's my idea!" And Rebecca waited with flushing cheeks and downcast eyes for the verdict.
There was a breathless pause of half a minute. Emma Jane seldom moved her mind in the presence of Rebecca, feeling that competition was impossible ”

“ My name's Rufus Holt, of Lawrence, Kansas." Here he held out his hand which Jenny took, stunned by the suddenness of his action. "I'm your hired man till this roof is fixed. You look to me like a grand little boss. I'll be back in an hour and I hope I don't get Alfinso and Alfonso mixed!"
"Creeping Jenny" has a method all its own of making its way upward and onward, silently, smoothly, under and over, betwixt and between obstacles. The slender little green vine climbs, not so much with strength, as with swiftness and grace, and accomplishes its growth in a miraculously short space of time. ”

“ At such times Rufus and Jenny would talk together before she gathered up the dishes. She allowed him a pipe, and when she attempted to rise and go to the kitchen he would say: "Take your 'nooning,' Miss Jenny, same as the rest of us. The minute you drop your housework you take out your needle." ”

“ You can get gay, pretty pieces and put four in a square and then join your squares corner to corner with plain ones in between. Perhaps Mrs. Perkins will have some new goods to help you out, and that'll set off the patchwork. Now, it's four o'clock and you can go and play, Rebecca."
Rebecca sped like an arrow shot from a bow, Emma Jane sped contemporaneously; Alice Robinson, Candace Milliken, and Persis Watson appeared as suddenly as if they had been concealed in woodchuck holes. ”

“ Alice Robinson nodded her curly head responsively and said: '"Quilt of Happiness!' It sounds lovely, if we don't have to tell anybody grown up who would say it's silly."
"But can happiness strike into anybody?" ”

“ There's no education in Temperance, just plain teaching, and only a few months a year. Sometimes we didn't have any lessons at all, because when there were big boys it took all teacher's time to make them behave. Down here Miss Dearborn can manage a big boy as easy as anything, so of course we have nothing to do but learn."
This was only the natural beginning of a cataract of conversation, and the acquaintance between Rebecca and Miss Roxy Lyman was now well started. Rebecca proceeded to open her mind on a dozen subjects of passionate interest to herself. ”

“ But I want to train myself to work at anything that comes. If I can't make good I'll go to a vocational school, but I want to harden myself first."
"My roof in November would be a good place for that!" said Jenny contemplatively. "What wages do you ask?"
"Half what the other men get around here, because I'm not a skilled worker at present. Now if you've got a ladder on the premises I can get up and tear off the old shingles while you negotiate for the new ones. Going to buy first quality cedars?" ”

“ Jenny leaned against the door-frame and stroked her crutch with a smile.
"Footicapped would be a better word," she said. "Are you a stranger in Riverboro? Won't you rest a moment? Make your way through the milk pans to the rocking chair. I do need a little help in getting my winter wood in."
"You'll require a lot of wood unless you get a tight roof over your head," said the stranger. "I'm a Western farmer's son, or at least I was; but my mother and father died while I was in France and I'm alone in the world." ”

“ The collecting of the happiness pieces did not turn out to be a task of insuperable difficulty. The children themselves furnished a goodly number. There were some scraps of Rebecca's pink gingham, her first dress of the color she adored but had never hitherto possessed, having worn out her sister Hannah's clothes ever since she was born. Emma Jane gave bits of her Scotch plaid poplin, called the handsomest dress ever worn in Riverboro's younger set. There were squares from frocks in which Persis and Candace had received school prizes and Alice Robinson had worn in tableaux. ”

“ They say a star can get along without any talent if she has the right kind of hair and wears her clothes well. I never had a chance to try on handsome dresses, but I guess my shape is as good as any of the stars I've seen. And my face wouldn't need any smoothing out nor touching up, for it's worrying that makes wrinkles, and I never was a worrier. Let other folks do the worrying, is my motto."
Undine, as she looked admiringly at her hair and skin and figure with the aid of a hand mirror, never once discovered that her nose was just the least little bit inclined to be flat. ”

“ He bent over her and kissed her cheek while Alfinso went for his muffler and mittens.
"Good-by! I'll bring back the ring; don't forget the party. We won't stint refreshments. I'll give the twins a dollar to bring you little trees and evergreens for garlands and we'll make a brave showing of the house. Isn't it lucky there'll be a full moon on the shingles? No doubt about the minister now! He'll have to come in the performance of his duty. Oh! my dear, my dear, God is being very good to me!"
"Good to us," whispered Creeping Jenny, putting her lips softly and shyly against his sleeve. ”

“ The teacher glanced out of the window now and then, noting in the distance a little cottage covered with vines and a somewhat-too-stout young man working in a flower garden. Some of the fragrant products of his growing were in a tumbler on her desk at the present moment, having been plucked by his own hand, tied neatly with twine, protected by a portion of the Lewiston Journal, and sent by the hand of the aforesaid Tommy, whose outward mien was respectful, but who declared in secret conclave that Matt Milliken was "stuck on teacher." ”

“ Every time he advanced, she seemed to retreat a little to fastnesses of thought where he was not at home.
"Some folks don't seem to hold up their heads before the public nor care how their buildings look," Undine commented severely, as they passed a poor little house, forlorn, unpainted, lacking clapboards and shingles.
"Well, a man has got to have a little money saved up, have good health, and work night and day to keep up his farm nowadays," said Matthew. ”

“ Imagine Aunt Hitty, then, in a comfortable sewing-chair, her lapboard on her knee, workbasket within reach, tongue in excellent running order, and one eye always on the road which goes past her window—for she is one of the few persons who can make over boys' clothes, conduct a fire of conversation, and miss nothing that goes on in the outside world, all at once. ”

“ Now, mother, without you like Vermont better'n you do Maine, and Lorenzo and Lulu better'n you do me, take the next train for home. When I get round to it, I shall know you're worth more'n a dozen Undines, though I won't deny I feel awful blue, and never expected to be turned down cold like I have been by Undine Berry, but I was misled by her looks, and that's the gospel truth. I ain't afraid you'll turn me down, mother, without Lorenzo and Lulu want you to winter with 'em awful bad, but I hope they won't, for the neighbors are bound to talk, and I need you more'n I like to write in a letter. ”

“ They came to know more of each other as the days went by. He and she, with Alfinso, ate luncheon together on the shed bench so that the day's labor need not be delayed by a trip to the village for Rufus. (At least that is what he said, and she said, and Alfinso said, and Mrs. Day said, and nobody doubted it but the postmistress.)
Alfinso, whose pay had now been increased to ten cents a day, was the most faithful of "gooseberries," but even he sometimes wandered away to the wood-pile to work on a motor that he was constructing, to be used in connection with the power of an old alarm clock. ”

“ There isn't a young man in the neighborhood that I'd want to go to church with, but if one of them should ever chance to ask me to have him, I'd say: 'Shingle the house and I'll say yes!'"
The girl's father smiled in spite of his pain as he whispered: "Don't be too easy when it comes to bargaining, Jenny! Stiperlate first quality cedar shingles, him to buy 'em as well as put 'em on! You're worth it!"
"I shall never have a chance to 'stiperlate,'" thought Jenny, as she went to the kitchen to make gruel ”

“ I'll go in to the village, get a boarding-place, and come back after lunch for a half-day's work."
"Thank you—that will be very kind."
"I'll pick up the milk pans and empty 'em for you, first. Poor old things! They don't know they're going out of business! Let me look at your ladder, please. A man that works with a woman's farming implements ought to carry a big life insurance!"
Jenny laughed again, joyously. ”