She could barely see her way.
There was a candle lighted in the south room, and her grandmother sat
there knitting. Ann Lizy, a piteous little figure in her white
night-gown, stood in the door.
"Well, what is it?" her grandmother said, in a severe voice that had a
kindly inflection in it.
"Grandma--"
"What is it?"
"I lost my patchwork on purpose. I didn't want--to sew it."
"Lost your patchwork on purpose!"
"Yes--ma'am," sobbed Ann Lizy.
"Let it drop out of the bag on purpose?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well, you did a dreadful wicked thing then. Go right back to bed."
Ann Lizy went back to bed and to sleep. Remorse no longer gnawed keenly
enough at her clear, childish conscience to keep her awake, now her sin
was confessed. She said her prayers and went to sleep. Although the next
morning the reckoning came, the very worst punishment was over for her.
Her grandmother held the judicious use of the rod to be a part of her
duty towards her beloved little orphan granddaughter, so she switched
Ann Lizy with a little rod of birch, and sent her forth full of salutary
tinglings to search for the bead bag and the patchwork. All the next
week Ann Lizy searched the fields and road for the missing articles,
when she was not cutting calico patchwork by a thread and sewing over
and over. It seemed to her that life was made up of those two
occupations, but at the end of a week the search, so far as the bead bag
was concerned, came to an end.
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