A borrowed sister

A few days later, the Drapers’ coachman brought two square envelopes to the house. Lois found, to her delight, that one was directed to herself and the other to Jessie. They opened them eagerly. Inside was a correspondence card with the monogram C. L. D. in silver letters at the top. On each card was written,—

There was some difficulty in getting the stockings, for Mrs. Page had already done the weekly mending, but she finally suggested that Mrs. Morgan could easily provide enough for all of them, and this proved to be the case. The four children met outside the Drapers’ gate. Anne was more than a year older than Jessie, but she was only a little taller, as Jessie was large for her age. Anne was a very beautiful girl, with curly golden hair and blue eyes. She and Jessie put their arms around each other’s waists, and so did Lois and Ellen. Ellen carried a brown plaid Boston bag that had grown shabby from long service.

“Isn’t this a hideous old thing?” she asked. “Mother says it is good enough to last for years. I hate Boston bags! It has four stockings in it,—one of Anne’s, and one of mine, and one of Amyas’s, and one of Reuben’s. I am going to mend Amyas’s, for it is so much more interesting to mend somebody else’s things, and besides, the hole is a small one, and Anne will mend Reuben’s, and you can mend mine, and Jessie, Anne’s. Won’t you just love to mend my stocking for me?”

“That depends on the kind of a hole it has,” said Lois unsentimentally.

“You oughtn’t to mind a little thing like that. You ought to be just crazy to do anything for me. Gertrude Brown would be perfectly thrilled to have a chance to mend my stocking.”

They were going up the Drapers’ avenue as she spoke, and presently reached the front door, which was opened by the neat maid in a white cap.

“I used to be so scared last year when I came to this house,” Lois confided to Ellen, “but now I don’t mind at all.”

“How prompt you are!” said Mrs. Draper, coming forward to meet them. “It is so warm to-day that I think it will be pleasant out on the piazza,” and she led the way through the large hall hung with portraits of Drapers in the clothes of a past century.

The piazza was at the back of the house, and was glassed in later in the season. It was large and square like a room, and contained a sofa and a table and a variety of comfortable chairs, all of green wicker-work. From the piazza they could look into the Drapers’ beautiful old-fashioned garden. It was a little too late for many flowers, but there were chrysanthemums of all kinds and colors still in blossom, besides dahlias and cosmos. The yellows and dull reds of the chrysanthemums and dahlias pleased the children’s color-loving eyes.

They all stood until Mrs. Draper had seated herself in one of the armchairs, and then Anne and Jessie slipped into seats near her, while Ellen and Lois took their places on the green wicker sofa, that they might be as close together as possible. On the table there was a dainty bag of white cretonne, with heliotrope fleur-de-lis on it. It was a large bag and held Mrs. Draper’s darning-materials. Ellen clutched her brown plaid Boston bag, and hastily slipped it down on the floor on the other side of the sofa.

Mrs. Draper took four wooden eggs out of her bag and gave one to each of the class.

“Now if you will give me your stockings, I will show you how to go to work,” she said.

Ellen stooped to unfasten her bag, and in pulling out the stockings she sent her thimble and Anne’s flying across the piazza floor.

When they were all at work, the four little girls looked very business-like as each one sat with an egg in her stocking, which disclosed the hole in all the roughness of its outline. Anne’s hole, which fell to Jessie’s share, was a delicate and lady-like one compared with the sturdy hole in Reuben’s sock which Anne was placidly mending, and the enormous one in Ellen’s stocking with which poor Lois was contending.

Mrs. Draper showed them how to draw the hole up around the edge, and then to put the threads in up and down, and after that to cross them with other threads, which they wove in and out like a basket pattern, reminding Jessie of the weaving she had learned years ago at kindergarten.

“I am going to give a prize to the one who does the best work,” said Mrs. Draper, and Ellen, who had felt that it didn’t matter very much whether she was careful or not, so long as it was Amyas’s sock she was mending, began to pull out her work.

When they were all well under way, Mrs. Draper took from the table a book bound in black and gold.

“I am going to read to you from ‘The Lady of the Lake,’” said Mrs. Draper. “This is the very book from which I read when I had a similar darning-class for my nieces, forty years ago.”

Lois felt very proud when she had the preliminary part of her darning done, and had put in all the threads that went up and down.

“It looks like a harp with a thousand strings,” whispered Ellen.

“I shall give only a small prize to-day,” said Mrs. Draper. “I have some sheets of gold and silver paper and some tissue paper of different colors that I thought perhaps you could use for paper-doll dresses.”

The children’s eyes gleamed with pleasure.

“But after three lessons I am going to give the pupil who has improved the most, this,” and Mrs. Draper took out of her bag an emery made in the shape of a strawberry. The children all thought it very beautiful, for besides being of such a pretty shape and color, it had a silver top. “This is to be the second prize at the end of three weeks,” and Mrs. Draper held up a little needle-book covered with white silk that had a pattern of pink rosebuds and green leaves on it. She untied the pink ribbons and showed some darning-needles and embroidery needles inside.

“I think the second prize is the nicest,” said Ellen.

“Well, the most promising pupil can choose which she likes best,” said Mrs. Draper.

In the middle of the lesson they had a recess; the maid brought out a tray, and on it were five glasses of lemonade, and some very thin, delicate ginger cookies.

“This is what I always used to have for my nieces, forty years ago,” said Mrs. Draper, with a gentle little sigh.

“I am so glad you did!” said Ellen.

As the end of the hour approached, Mrs. Draper brought out the gold and silver sheets and the tissue paper. There were sheets of nearly all the colors of the rainbow, green, blue, yellow, red, and also pink and gray. Lois longed more and more to have those beautiful sheets of paper for her very own. She tried hard to make her hole look neat, but it was larger than any of the others, even than the one Anne was darning, and Anne was so much older and quicker with her fingers that Lois despaired of equaling her. Mrs. Draper took the four stockings, when they were finished, and looked at them critically.

“That is not bad for a first attempt,” she said, holding up Anne’s, “but even that is far from the work I hope you will all do some time. There is no doubt but that the first prize goes to Anne. I am going to have a second prize, however, for the one who darned the largest hole, so, Lois, you will have some of this paper.”

She divided the sheets into two portions, as she spoke, giving twice as many to Anne as to Lois.

“Now next Saturday,” she said, “I am going to give out the stockings myself, and let Ellen have the largest hole to mend, because she has had the smallest to-day, and Lois will have the smallest. Don’t you think this is only fair?”

“Yes, I do,” Ellen admitted, hanging her head.