Annie Fellows Johnston - The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle
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Annie Fellows Johnston >> The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle
THE QUILT THAT JACK BUILT
Works of
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
The Little Colonel Series
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Two Little Knights of Kentucky .60
Big Brother .60
Ole Mammy's Torment .60
The Story of Dago .60
Cicely .60
Aunt 'Liza's Hero .60
The Quilt that Jack Built .60
Flip's "Islands of Providence" .60
Mildred's Inheritance .60
The Little Man in Motley .60
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Joel: A Boy of Galilee $1.50
In the Desert of Waiting .60
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THE PAGE COMPANY
53 Beacon Street Boston, Mass.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "HIS SERIOUS LITTLE FACE PUCKERED INTO AN ANXIOUS
FROWN" (_See page 4_)]
Cosy Corner Series
THE QUILT
THAT JACK BUILT
HOW HE WON THE BICYCLE
By
Annie Fellows Johnston
Author of "The Little Colonel" Series, "Big Brother,"
"The Story of Dago," "Joel: A Boy of Galilee," etc.
_Illustrated by_
Etheldred B. Barry
_Boston_
_The Page Company_
_Publishers_
_Copyright_, 1904
BY L.C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Published October, 1904
Third Impression, March, 1910
Fourth Impression, February, 1911
Fifth Impression, March, 1914
Sixth impression, July, 1919
THE COLONIAL PRESS
C.H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
TO
THE BOY
WHO HAS MADE ALL BOYHOOD DEAR TO ME--
MY ONLY SON
=John=
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"HIS SERIOUS LITTLE FACE PUCKERED INTO AN
AN ANXIOUS FROWN" (_See page 4_) Frontispiece
"EVERY ONE WAS MAKING PATCHWORK" 6
"'DEAR AS IT IS TO ME, IT IS NOT SO DEAR AS THE
KEEPING OF MY WORD'" 11
"THE FAMILIAR SQUARES OF FADED PATCHWORK MET
HIS EYE" 19
"EACH BOY LONGED TO OWN IT" 30
"HOEING AWAY IN HIS GARDEN" 38
"'I STOPPED AND READ IT THROUGH TWICE'" 44
"'AND THAT KID JUST STARTED OFF ON FOOT'" 52
THE QUILT THAT JACK BUILT
HOW HE WON THE BICYCLE
THE QUILT THAT JACK BUILT
"Johnny _make a quilt!_" repeated Rob Marshall, with a shout of
laughter. "I'd as soon expect to see a wild buffalo knitting mittens!"
"But you're not to speak of it outside the family, Rob," his mother
hastened to say, "and you must not tease the little fellow. You older
children have ways of earning pocket-money,--Rhoda with her painting,
and you with your bent iron work, but Johnny hasn't had a cent of
income all fall. You know when your father explained what a hard
winter this would be, and said we must economize in every way
possible, Johnny offered to give up the little amount I allowed him
every week for chores. He has been doing his work ever since without
pay. Now, he is wild to buy Todd Walters' rifle. He can get it for
only three dollars, and I want him to have it if possible. He has
cheerfully gone without so many things this fall. He followed me
around the house all morning, begging me to think of some way in which
he could earn the money, until, in desperation, I suggested that he
piece a quilt for me at a cent a block. To my great surprise, he
consented eagerly. He usually scorns anything that looks like girls'
work."
"And mother will have to do without the new bonnet that she had
counted on getting with the turkey money that always comes in just
before Christmas, in order to pay for it," said Rhoda to her brother.
"I think it's a shame. She needs it too badly to give it up for that
child's whim."
"No, daughter," answered Mrs. Marshall, gently. "In a country
neighbourhood like this it matters little whether I wear my clothes
one year or seven: and it is not a mere whim with Johnny. He wants
that rifle more than he ever wanted anything in his life before. I
think the quilt money would be a good investment. The work will teach
him patience and neatness, and above all keep him quiet in the
evenings. Since your father has been so worried over his business, he
needs all the relaxation possible at home, he enjoys reading aloud in
the evenings, and Johnny's fidgeting annoys him. A ten-year-old boy is
all wriggle and racket without something to occupy him."
She did not say it aloud, but, as she cut out the gay patchwork, she
thought, with a warm glow of heart, of another reason for the
investment. The quilt would be such a precious reminder of Johnny's
boyhood some day, when he had put away childish things. Every stitch
would be dear to her, because of the little stubby fingers that worked
so patiently to set them, despite the needle pricks and knotted
thread.
That evening, with every curtain drawn tight, so that no prying
outsider might see and tell, and ready to run at the first sign of an
approaching visitor, Johnny sat down on the hearth-rug, tailor
fashion, to begin the quilt. A slateful of calculations had shown him
that, by making five blocks every evening and fifteen every Saturday,
he could finish by Christmas. Todd would wait until then for his
money. Three hundred and fifty blocks would give him enough for the
rifle, and half a dollar besides for ammunition.
"Well, Johnny," said Mr. Marshall, teasingly, "I suppose your mother
signed a contract for this. 'There's many a slip,' you know. What
would you do if the turkeys died before Christmas, and she couldn't
pay you?"
"Huh! No danger of mother's not keeping her word!" answered Johnny,
with a confident wag of his head. "She said she'd pay me, not only the
day, but the very _hour_ they were done. Didn't you, mother?"
"Yes, son," was the smiling answer, as she put the first block into
his hands, and the quilt was begun. Not only the quilt, but a series
of quiet evenings long to be remembered by the Marshall family. The
picture of Johnny bending over his patchwork, his serious little face
puckered into an anxious frown, as he tugged at the thread with
awkward fingers, is one of the ways they love best to think of him.
They still laugh heartily over the time when he rolled under the sofa,
work-basket and all, to escape the eyes of a gossipy neighbour, who
had knocked unexpectedly at the side door, and who stayed so long that
he fell asleep and snored loudly.
The following Saturday morning, Mrs. Marshall, going out to the barn
for a hatchet, heard voices on the other side of the partition.
Peeping through a crack, she saw a sight that confounded her.
Every boy in the neighbourhood seemed to be there, and every one was
making patchwork. One boy was dangling his feet over the manger,
several were perched on a ladder, and one was sitting cross-legged on
a huge pumpkin. Johnny was going around as Grand Inquisitor from one
to another. If a seam was puckered, he gave the unlucky seamstress
what they called a "hickey,"--a tremendous thump on the head with his
thumb and middle finger. If the stitches were big and uneven, he gave
two hickeys and a pinch, and one boy got half a dozen, because Johnny
said his dirty hands made the thread gray. Mrs. Marshall gathered that
it was some sort of secret society, and that they had signed an oath
in their own blood not to tell.
"Johnny is at the bottom of it," she thought, laughing as she went
back to the house. "He has set the other boys to sewing in order to
forestall them. Now they cannot tease him, should they hear of his
private quilt-piecing."
[Illustration]
Another week went by of peaceful, uninterrupted evenings, and every
night at bedtime Johnny counted out his tale of finished blocks with
a sigh of relief. On the second Saturday evening he disappeared
immediately after supper. It was nearly an hour later when he came
tumbling excitedly into the house.
"Look, mother! Look, everybody!" he exclaimed. "It's all done! Here
are the three hundred and fifty blocks all in one pile. Now, I'm ready
for my money, mother."
"Why, Johnny!" gasped Mrs. Marshall, in astonishment. "It isn't
possible you have done them all in two short weeks!"
"Here they are," answered Johnny, smiling broadly. "Todd got in a
hurry for his money, and I was so everlasting tired of the old
patchwork that I had to think of some plan; so I farmed out two
hundred of the blocks at a quarter of a cent apiece. I got up a sort
of secret society, and we sewed after school and on Saturdays in the
barn. The boys are waiting around the corner for their money now.
There's ten of 'em, and I owe each one a nickel. So give me part of
the money in small change, please, mother. Todd's there, too, 'cause I
told him that you said you'd pay the very hour they were done."
He dropped the bundle in her lap and hopped up and down, holding one
foot in his hand. "Now the rifle's mine," he sang. "I can look the
whole world in the face, for I owe not any man." He was quoting from
the memory exercises at school. His eager face clouded a little at his
mother's ominous silence. He shifted uneasily from one foot to
another, wondering why she did not speak. At last she said, slowly:
"But I had expected to pay you out of the turkey money, and I can't
get that before Christmas. I hadn't an idea you could finish before
then. And, oh, Johnny!" she added, sadly, "I thought it would be all
your own work. What do I care for a quilt made by Tom, Dick, and
Harry? I consented to spend so much money on it, because I thought it
would give you employment for six or seven weeks at least, and that we
would all set such store by a quilt that you had made with your own
little fingers,--every stitch of it!"
Johnny wriggled uncomfortably. It had been purely a business
arrangement with him. He could not understand his mother's sentiment.
There was another disagreeable pause. Mrs. Marshall gazed into the
fire with such a disappointed look in her eyes that Johnny felt the
tears coming into his own. Then his father and Rob and Rhoda, seeing
the humour of the situation, began to laugh.
"Oh, what a joke!" gasped Rhoda finally, holding her sides.
"Who on? I'd like to know," demanded Johnny, savagely, and threw
himself full length on the rug.
"I don't know what to do!" he sobbed, his face buried in his arms, and
his feet waving wildly back and forth above his prostrate body. "I
don't know what to do-oo! The boys are out there waiting for me around
the corner, expecting me to bring the money right away. I told them
_sure_ I'd bring it--that you promised--the very hour! I didn't know
it made any difference to you who finished 'em, just so they was
done."
"It was a misunderstanding, Johnny," said his mother, rising slowly,
"but I'll keep my promise, of course." She went up-stairs, and in a
few minutes came back with a five-dollar gold piece that she had taken
out of a little box of keepsakes. They all knew its history.
"Oh, mother, not that!" cried Rhoda. "Not the gold piece that
grandfather gave you because he was so proud of your leading the
school a whole year both in scholarship and deportment!"
"Yes, he gave it to me on my tenth birthday, just a little while
before he died. It was the last thing he ever gave me, and I have kept
it for thirty years as one of my most precious possessions." She was
rubbing the little coin until it shone like new, with the bit of
chamois skin in which it had been folded. "But dear as it is to me, it
is not so dear as the keeping of my word. Here, Johnny, take it down
to the corner, and ask Mr. Dolkins to change it for you."
Mr. Marshall listened with a pained contraction of the brows.
"Couldn't you wait until the latter part of next week, Abby?" he
asked. "I think I could get the money for you by that time, and I hate
to have you part with the little keepsake you have treasured so long."
Mrs. Marshall shook her head. "No, Robert," she answered, "for that
would make Johnny break his word, too. You know he promised the
boys,--and we couldn't afford that, could we, son? We must keep our
word at any cost." She slipped the money into his hand, kissed him,
and bade him hurry home again; and Johnny, rushing back to his
impatient creditors, felt that it was something very solemn indeed
which had just taken place.
[Illustration: "'DEAR AS IT IS TO ME, IT IS NOT SO DEAR AS THE KEEPING
OF MY WORD.'"]
Johnny's little room at the head of the stairs was heated by the hall
stove, so that the door stood open all day long. When the new quilt
was folded across the foot of his bed, it was the first thing that
caught the eye of every one passing up the stairs.
Rob made up a verse about it, which he sang so often to tease Johnny
that the first note was enough to make the child bristle up for a
fight:
"This is the patchwork all forlorn,
Made by the boys in Marshall's barn.
The dog and the cat and even the rat
Had a hand in that--
A hand in the Quilt that Jack built!"
"You needn't make fun of it," said Rhoda one day. "It has held me to
my word more than once. Yesterday, for instance. I would have broken
my promise to poor little Miss Sara Grimes, to help her entertain her
old ladies, and would have accepted Harry Dilling's invitation, which
came later, to go sleighing. But that quilt would not let me. It
showed me mother as she stood there with her precious little gold
piece, saying. '_We must keep our word at any cost!_' After that I
couldn't disappoint poor old Miss Sara."
"I know," answered Rob, softly, looking up from his algebra. "It's
served me the same way. It lies there like the exponent of a higher
power,--the exponent of mother's standards and ideals that she expects
us to raise ourselves up to."
Mr. Marshall made a similar confession one day, and it seemed that
Johnny alone was the only member of the family who had no sentiment in
regard to the quilt, except, perhaps, a feeling of gratitude. It had
brought him the rifle. He snuggled down under it on cold winter
nights, tumbled out from under it on cold winter mornings, and went
his happy-go-lucky way, regardless of what it might have said to him
if he had had ears to hear. Then, when, worn and faded by many
washings, it outgrew its usefulness as he outgrew his boyhood, one
spring morning his mother packed it carefully away in folds of old
linen and lavender.
It was toward the middle of John Marshall's freshman year at college.
The boy "all wriggle and racket" was a strong, athletic young fellow
now, still with the same propensities of his restless boyhood. His
overflowing animal spirits made him a jolly companion, and he found
himself popular from the start. There was no need now for petty
economies in the Marshall homestead. Business had been prosperous
since that one hard winter when Johnny made patchwork to pay for his
gun, and he found himself now with as liberal an allowance as any one
in his class.
"I'm in for having a royal good time," he wrote to Rhoda, who was
home-keeper now, for it had been two years since her mother's death,
and Rhoda had done her best to fill the vacant place to them all. "And
you needn't preach to me, Sis," he wrote. "I'm all right, and I'm not
going to get into the trouble which you cheerfully predict. I shall
not get into any scrapes that I can't skin out of; but a fellow would
be a fool who didn't squeeze as much fun as possible out of his
college life."
As he was finishing this letter, three students, who were foremost in
all the fun going, came tumbling unceremoniously into his room. "Say,
you there, Marshall," cried the first one, "hustle up and get ready
for a lark to-night. You know that Sophomore Wilson, the long-faced
fellow the boys call Squills? He's rooming in the old Baptist
parsonage away out on the edge of town. It's vacant now, and they're
glad to let him have a room free for the sake of somebody to guard the
premises. We've found that he will be out to-night, sitting up with a
sick frat., so we've planned to borrow the parsonage in his absence to
give a swell dinner. Tingley and Jones will visit several hen-roosts
in our behalf, and we'll roast the fowls in the parsonage stove. If
you'll just set up the champagne, Jacky, my boy, we'll be 'Yours for
ever, little darling,' and we'll gamble on the green of the defunct
parson's study table 'till morning doth appear.'"
He took out a new deck of cards as he spoke, and slapped
significantly on his overcoat pocket, bulging with packages of
cigarettes.
"What if Squills should come back unexpectedly?" asked Johnny.
"Oh, that's all arranged. We'll toss him up in a blanket until he
hasn't breath enough left to squeal on us. Suppose you bring along a
blanket, if you have one to spare," suggested the wild senior, whose
notice always flattered the susceptible freshman. "In case Squills
does turn up before schedule time, it would be a good thing to have
one handy."
"All right, I'll be ready. When do you start?"
"At ten o'clock," was the answer. "We'll come by for you," and the
three conspirators tramped down the long corridor, shoulder to
shoulder, to the whistled tune of "John Brown's Body."
John sat down at his table, frowning over his lessons for the next
day. For nearly an hour he tried to work, first at his Latin and then
on the theme that he was expected to hand in directly after chapel.
But his thoughts were on the coming lark.
"Oh, bother!" he exclaimed at last, tossing the books into a
disorderly heap and tearing his theme in two. "What difference will it
make fifty years from now, if I'm not prepared to-morrow? I guess I'll
get that blanket while I think about it."
At the beginning of the cold weather, he had written home for some
extra blankets, and Rhoda had sent a box immediately. It had been
standing in the closet several days, waiting for him to find time to
unpack it. A sofa pillow made of his class colours came tumbling out
as he removed the lid, and, wondering what other extras his sister
might have put in the box, he turned it upside down on the bed to
investigate. Two fine soft blankets came first, then an eiderdown
comfort, and then--something wrapped in a square of time-yellowed
linen, and smelling faintly of lavender.
"What under the canopy!" he muttered, beginning to unfold it. "Well,
I'll be--jiggered!" he exclaimed, as the familiar squares of faded
patchwork met his eye. "It's that old quilt I made for mother!" He had
forgotten its existence, but now, as he spread it out full length,
smiling at the well-known object, it seemed only yesterday that he
had been at work upon it. Rob's old teasing rhyme came back to him:
"This is the patchwork all forlorn,
Made by the boys in Marshall's barn."
[Illustration: "THE FAMILIAR SQUARES OF FADED PATCHWORK MET HIS EYE"]
"It _was_ funny," he thought, "the way I farmed out those two hundred
blocks to the other boys. Why, here's a piece of one of those little
striped waists I used to wear, and there's a piece of Rob's checked
shirt and Rhoda's apron. I wouldn't have imagined that I could have
recognized them after all these years, but they look as natural as
life. And this,"--his finger was resting on a square of dotted blue
calico,--"mother wore this. My! the times I've hung on to that dress,
following her around the house, bothering her to stop and cover a
ball, or make me a marble bag, or untangle my fishing-lines. And she
always stopped so patiently."
He was back in the sunny old kitchen, with its spicy smell of
gingerbread and pies, hot from the Saturday baking. Outside, the snow
clung to the trees, but the wintry sun shining through the shelf of
yellow chrysanthemums by the window, made dancing summer shadows on
the clean white floor. He was looking at the quilt through blurred
eyes now. How many, many nights she had spread it over him and tucked
him snugly in, and softly kissed his eyelids down, before she carried
away the lamp. It came over him all in a swift rush, with a sudden
cold sense of desolation, that she could never do that again! never
any more! The light had been taken away, never to be brought back.
Big fellow as he was, he dropped on his knees by the bed, and buried
his face in the old quilt, with a long, quivering sob. He had been
occupied with so many things in the new experiences of his college
life that he had not missed her for the last few months: but the sight
of the old quilt brought her so plainly before him that the longing to
have her back was almost intolerable.
Several blocks away, a crowd of students crossing the campus in the
moonlight started a rollicking chorus. It floated blithely up to him
on the wintry night air.
"The fellows will be here in a minute," he thought. "What would she
say if she knew? I promised her that I would never, never touch a
drop of liquor or a deck of cards, and here I am, getting ready for a
night of drinking and gambling and carousing. But I've gone too far to
back out now. How they'd hoot and laugh if they knew!"
He got up, and began to fold the quilt, preparatory to putting it back
in the box. The old scenes still kept crowding upon him. He saw
himself lying on the hearth-rug, the night the boys were waiting for
him around the corner, and he was crying out, "But you _promised me!
You promised me!_" and there was his mother with the bit of a gold
piece in her hand,--the precious little keepsake that she had
treasured for thirty years, saying, in answer to her husband's
remonstrance: "No, Robert, that would make Johnny break his promise,
too, and we couldn't afford that, could we, son? We must keep our word
at any cost!"
It stood out fair and fine now, the memory of her unswerving
truthfulness, her fidelity to duty. If the commonplace deeds of those
early days had seemed of little moment to his childish eyes in
passing, he saw them at their full value now. He recognized the high
purpose with which she had pieced her little days together, now that
he could look at the whole beautiful pattern of her finished life. How
sacredly she had always kept her word to him, the slightest promise
always inviolate! Ah, the little gold coin was the very least of all
her sacrifices.
He was about to say, "No, they shall not all be in vain," when he
heard the fellows on the walk outside. A cold perspiration broke out
on his forehead, as he considered the consequences should he refuse to
go with them. Strong as he was, he had a fear of ridicule. To be
laughed at, to be ostracized by the set he admired, was more than he
could endure. Like many another brave fellow, fearless in every
respect but one, he was an arrant coward before that one overpowering
fear of being laughed at.
He gathered the quilt in his arms, debating whether he should hide it
hastily in the closet, or come out boldly before them all with its
whole homely little story. The fellows were tramping down the hall
now. Oh, what _should_ he do? Go or not? It meant to break with them
for all time if he refused now.