spread and fly away with."

"Why, it's like—it's like"—

"What is it like, Sammy?"

"Ain't it like folks, Miss Ruth?" Grandma sings:—

"Yes," she said; "it is like folks." Then glancing at her crutch, repeated, smiling: "In the morning."

When the woodbine in the porch had turned red, and the maples in the door-yard yellow, the flower-pots were removed to the warm cellar, and one winter evening Sammy Ray wrote Greeny's epitaph:—

He came often in the spring to ask if any thing had happened, and one day Miss Ruth took from a box and laid in his hand a shining brown chrysalis, with a curved handle.

"What a funny little brown jug!" said Sammy.

"Greeny is inside; close your hand gently and see if you feel him."

"How cold!" said the boy; and then: "Oh! oh! he is alive, for he kicks!"

In June Greeny and Blacky came out of their shells, but no one saw them do it, for it was in the night; but Sly-boots was more obliging. One morning Miss Ruth heard a rustling, and lo! what looked like a great bug, with long, slender legs, was climbing to the top of the box. Soon he hung by his feet to the netting, rested motionless a while, and then slowly, slowly unfolded his wings to the sun. They were brown and white and pink, beautifully shaded, and his body was covered with rings of brown satin. Blacky and Greeny were not so handsome. They had orange-spotted bodies, great wings of sober gray, and carried long flexible tubes curled like a watch-spring, that could be stretched out to suck honey from the flowers.

At sunset Miss Ruth sent for the boys. She placed the uncovered box where the moths waited with folded wings, in the open window. Up from the garden came a soft breeze sweet with the breath of the roses and petunias. There was a stir, a rustle, a waving of dusky wings, and the box was empty.

So Greeny and Blacky and Sly-boots "took their wings and flew away," and the boys saw them no more.

CHAPTER II.

THE PATCHWORK QUILT SOCIETY.

The minister's wife came home from a meeting of the sewing society one afternoon quite discouraged.

"Only nine ladies present!" she said, "and very little accomplished; and the barrel promised to that poor missionary out West, before cold weather—I really don't see how it is to be done."

"What work have you on hand?" Miss Ruth inquired.

"We have just made a beginning," Mrs. Elliot answered with a sigh. "There's half a dozen fine shirts to make, and a pile of sheets and pillowcases, dresses and aprons for four little girls, table-cloths and towels to hem, and I know not what else. We always have sent a bed-quilt, but this barrel must go without it. It's a pity, too, for they need bedding."

"Why, so it is," said Miss Ruth. "Susie,"—to a little girl sitting close beside her,—"why can't some of you girls get together one afternoon in the week and make a patchwork quilt to send in the barrel?"

Susie put her head on one side and considered.

"Where could we meet, Aunt Ruth?"

"Here in my room, Susie, if mamma has no objection."

"Certainly not," Mrs. Elliot said; "but are you well enough to undertake it, Ruth?"

"Yes, indeed, Mary; I shall really enjoy it."

"And would you cut out the blocks for us, and show us how to keep them from getting all skewonical, like the cradle-quilt I made for Amelia Adeline?"

Amelia Adeline was Susie's doll.

"Yes; and I could tell you stories while you were working. How would that do?"

"Why, it would be splendid!" said the little girl. "There comes Mollie, I guess, by the noise. Won't she be glad? Say, Mollie!—why, what a looking object!"

This exclamation was called forth by the appearance of the little girl, who had been heard running at full speed the length of the piazza, and now presented herself at the door of Miss Ruth's room, her face flushed, her hair in the wildest confusion, and the skirt of her calico frock quite detached from the waist, hanging over her arm.

"Wasn't it lucky that the gathers ripped?" she cried, holding up the unlucky fragment. "If they hadn't, mamma, I should be hanging, head down, from the five-barred gate in the lower pasture, and no body to help me but the cows. You see, I set out to jump, and my skirt got caught in a nail on the post."

"O Mollie!" said her mother, "what made you climb the five-barred gate?"

"'Cause she's a big tom-boy," said Lovina Tibbs, who had come from the kitchen to call the family to supper. "Ain't yer 'shamed of yerself, Mary Elliot?—a great girl like you, most ten years old, walkin' top o' rail fences and climbin' apple-trees in the low pastur'!"

"No, I'm not!" said Mollie, promptly.

"Hush, Mollie," said Mrs. Elliot. "Lovina, that will do. Wash your face and hands, Mollie, and make yourself decent to come to supper."

An hour later, seated in the hammock, the girls discussed their aunt's plan.

"We'll have the Jones girls," said Susie, "and Grace Tyler, and Nellie Dimock, she's such a dear little thing; and I suppose we must ask Fan Eldridge, because she lives next door, though I dread to have her come, she gets mad so easy; but mamma wouldn't like to have us leave her out; and then, let's see—oh! we'll ask Florence Austin, the new girl, you know."

"Would you?" said Mollie, doubtfully. "We don't know her very well, and she dresses so fine and is kind of citified, you know. Ar'n't you afraid she'll spoil the fun?"

"No," said Susie, decidedly. "Mamma said we were to be good to her because she's a stranger; and I think she's nice, too—not a bit proud, though her father is so rich."

"Well," Mollie assented, who, though thirteen months older than her sister, generally yielded to Susie's better judgment; "let her come, then. That makes six besides us, and Aunt Ruth said half a dozen would be plenty. Sue, I think it's going to be real jolly, don't you?"

CHAPTER III.

THE STORY OF DINAH DIAMOND.

Miss Ruth Elliot was the minister's sister. And two years before, when she came to live in the parsonage, an addition of two rooms was built for her on the ground floor because she was an invalid, and lame, and could not climb the stairs.

They were pretty rooms, with soft carpets, pictures on the walls, and in the winter time the sun shining in all day at the south window and the glass door. In summer with this door wide open and the piazza cool and shady with woodbine and clematis, you would have agreed with the little girls who made up Ruth Elliot's sewing circle, that first Wednesday afternoon, that they were "just lovely!"

All were there—the Jones' twins, Ann Eliza and Eliza Ann, tall girls as like each other as two peas and growing so fast one could always see where their gowns were let down; Grace Tyler with curly black hair and rosy cheeks; Nellie Dimock, a little dumpling of a girl with big blue eyes and a funny turned up nose; Fannie Eldridge, looking so sweet and smiling, you would not suspect she could be guilty of the fault Susie had charged her with; and Florence Austin, whose father had lately purchased a house in Green Meadow, and with his family had come to live in the country. Last of all, the minister's two little daughters, whom you have already met.

Ruth Elliot was sitting at a table covered