Golden Days for Boys and Girls Part 1

Golden Days for Boys and Girls.

by Various.

LINDA'S CRAZY QUILT.

By Fannie Williams.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Linda Trafton, turning over the pages of a closely-written, school-girlish letter, which her brother Fred had tossed into her lap, on returning from the post office. "I do wish I could get silk pieces enough to make a crazy quilt. Cousin Dell writes all about hers, and it must be very pretty."

"Crazy quilt! That's about all I've heard for the last six months!

I should think you girls had all gone crazy yourselves!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Fred.

"Why, Fred!" was Linda's only answer to this outburst.

She was a very sweet-tempered little maid, with soft, brown hair and soft, brown eyes, that matched in color as exactly as eyes and hair could match, and gave her a look of being--as indeed she was--too gentle to dispute, or even to argue, with anybody, least of all with Fred, who was fifteen, and three years her elder, and always took a tone of great superiority toward his little sister.

Still, he was a pretty good sort of brother, as brothers go; and, in Linda's eyes, he was a prodigy of cleverness.

So, whenever they happened to differ in opinion, and Fred expressed himself in this vehement style, she only looked at him in a deprecating way, and murmured:

"Why, Fred!"

"Well, I should like to know," continued Fred, "what could be more idiotic than the way you spend your time, you girls, fitting those ridiculous, catty-cornered pieces of silk together, and working them all over with bugs and cobwebs and caterpillars, and little boys in Mother Hubbard dresses! You may well call 'em _crazy_ quilts! I don't believe there was ever anything crazier, unless it was the lunatic who first invented them!"

"Why, Fred!" said Linda, again. "Now, I think they are too pretty for anything!"

"Pretty!" snorted Fred. "They're made out of the last things that you'd suppose anybody would ever think of putting into a bed-quilt. I can't get a chance to wear a neck-tie half out before somebody wants it. Kate Graham spoke for my last new one the next day after I bought it. And I hardly dare to put my hat down, where there's a girl around, for fear she'll capture my hat-band!"

By this time, Linda was laughing outright.

"Oh, you are so funny, Fred! But you only just ought to see Kate Graham's crazy quilt. I _know_ you couldn't help calling it lovely. She has got pieces of ever so many wedding dresses in it; but I don't know who would give _me_ any. Aunt Mary never will get married, nor Cousin Susie, nor our Bridget, unless Pat hurries up with his courting--and there's n.o.body else. Besides, they are all making crazy quilts of their own. I would start one with papa's old silk handkerchief and his a.s.sociation badge, if I thought I could ever get pieces enough to finish it; but I don't see how I could."

"Bess Hartley told me that she was going to send off somewhere and get a lot of pieces that are put up to sell. You get a whole package of a.s.sorted colors for a dollar," suggested Fred.

"Oh, that would make it cost too much! Mamma would not let me do that,"

said Linda, shaking her head. "She says it is well enough to use up odd bits of silk in that way, if one happens to have them; but she doesn't think it right to spend money in such a manner, instead of using it for better purposes--and I don't suppose it is."

"Well, I am sure I don't know what you are going to do," was Fred's consoling observation. "You'd be as crazy as the rest of the girls if you began to piece a quilt; and I don't know but you will go crazy if you can't."

With which conclusion, Fred walked off whistling, and left Linda to read her Cousin Dell's letter over again, and wish that Patrick O'Brien would propose to Bridget, if he was ever going to, so that she could get married, and have a new silk dress for her wedding.

However, Linda was not the girl to fret and worry after things which were unattainable.

Fred would have his joke, but she was not going to make herself unhappy just because she had not the materials for making silk patchwork, as Dell and the rest of her girl friends were doing. There were plenty of other pleasures and amus.e.m.e.nts within her reach, and the one that she enjoyed most of all came in her way, as it happened, the very next morning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "OH, MRS. BURBANK! WHAT BEAUTIFUL PIECES!" CRIED LINDA.

"WHERE DID THEY ALL COME FROM?"]

Her father said to her, as he rose from the table after breakfast:

"Linda, would you like a ride, my dear? I am going to drive over to East Berlin, and I will take you along, if you would like to go."

"_If_ I would like it! Why, papa, you _know_ there isn't _anything_ that I like so much as a good, long ride with you!" cried Linda, dancing with delight, as she ran off to get ready for the drive.

For it was indeed a "good long" ride to East Berlin--fifteen miles at least--and the day was just as fresh and bright and lovely as a day could be in the fresh and bright and lovely month of May.

The young gra.s.s was emerald green along the country roads, the apple trees were all in sheets of bloom, hill-sides were fairly blue with bird-foot violets, and sweet spring flowers were smiling everywhere.

Linda was so full of happiness that she could scarcely keep from singing in concert with the birds that trilled and chirped among the trees on either hand, as the pleasant road led through a piece of woodland.

But the woods came to an end abruptly where the trees had been cut off, and where some men with ox-carts were hauling away the long piles of cord-wood. Then there were fields of plowed ground on each side of the road, and then a long stretch of rocky hills and old pastures, and presently some houses came in sight.

Old, weather-beaten houses they were--a dozen, perhaps, in all. Two or three had once been painted red, and still displayed some dark and dingy traces of that color; but most of them were brown, and some had green moss growing on their broad, sloping roofs--roofs which were two stories high in front, but came down so low at the back that a lively boy might reach them from the ground with very little effort, only the place did not look as if anything so young or so lively as a boy had been seen there for at least twenty years.

Still, it was a pleasant place. There were thickets of lilac and mock-orange bushes around every house, and old-fas.h.i.+oned lilies and roses growing half-wild along the fences.

There were flagged walks leading up to all the doors, with borders of evergreen box, which had once been trim, and still was quaint and pleasing; there were old gardens, where everything was "all run out,"

but where the bees and birds appeared to find congenial homes; there were gnarly old apple-trees, with bending, twisted branches that touched the ground and made the most enticing rustic seats.

Withal, there was a calm and stillness brooding on the place that filled one's fancy with sweet thoughts of olden times and--

"Whoo-oo-oop! Hip, hip, pip, hoo-_ray_!"

"Good _gracious_!" cried Mr. Trafton, starting from his pleasant reverie, and clutching at the reins which lay loose upon his knee. "Good gracious! What's that?"

"It's a boy!" said Linda, with a quite disgusted accent.

Unquestionably, it was a boy--and a boy of the most aggressively modern type, clad in garments of the very latest cut, from his flannel yachting-s.h.i.+rt to his canvas "base-ball" shoes--a boy with a look as well as a voice, which proclaimed him all alive.

His close-cropped head was bare, and his white straw hat came spinning over the stone wall and into the middle of the road, as if impelled by steam-power, before the boy himself scrambled over, giving vent to another whoop, which would have done credit to a Comanche gone mad.

The whoop and the hat together were enough to startle almost any horse; and, although Mr. Trafton's fine roadster, "Billy," was pretty well trained, the combined effect was a little too much for his nerves. He gave a sidelong leap and started to run. His master checked him sharply, and veering from the road, he ran the wheels into a deep rut, and over went the buggy with a cras.h.!.+

Linda screamed, as she was pitched headlong into a thicket of sweet-fern which grew along the roadside; but the bushes broke her fall, and, beyond the fright and a scratched hand, she received no injury.

Her father was equally fortunate, and, as Billy had recovered from his momentary panic and did not run, the accident appeared, at the first glance, to be nothing serious.

The boy who had caused it came forward, with a look of trepidation upon his countenance, exclaiming:

"I'm awfully sorry, sir; I didn't mean to frighten your horse. I was down behind the wall and didn't see you coming, or I wouldn't have thrown my hat so. I was only scaring a squirrel."

"He must have been pretty thoroughly scared," said Mr. Trafton, drily.

However, the boy's bright face wore an expression of such honest regret that he added, with a good-humored accent:

"Well, well, I was a boy myself once. You must be more careful another time, my lad."