GRANDMA'S ATTIC SERIES (2 page)

"Good night, Mabel. Sleep well," he said as he closed the barn door behind him. I doubted that I would sleep at all. If it hadn't been for the goat and my brothers who would laugh at me, I would have returned to the house at once. Instead I closed my eyes tightly and began to say my prayers. In a few moments the barn door opened, and Reuben's voice called to me.

"Mabel," he said, "it's just me." He came over to where I lay, and I saw that he had a blanket under his arm.

"I thought I'd sleep out here tonight too. I haven't slept in the barn for a long time. You don't mind, do you?" "Oh, no. That's fine." I turned over and fell asleep at once.

When I awoke in the morning, the goat and Reuben were both gone. Soon I found the goat curled up by his mother.

"Will you be sleeping in the barn again tonight?" Ma asked me at breakfast.

"No, I don't think so," I said. "I'll take care of the goat during the day, but I guess his mother can watch him at night." '

Grandma laughed at the memory. "After I grew up, I told Reuben how grateful I was that he came out to stay with me. I wonder how my family ever put up with all my foolishness."

Grandma went back into the house, and I wandered out to the barn to see the little kittens. I decided I wouldn't be brave enough to spend the night there even with a big brother to keep me company!

Something is wrong with this, Grandma," I said. "It doesn't have as many stitches as I started out with."

Grandma took my knitting and looked at it carefully.

"You dropped a stitch back here," she said, and using a crochet hook, she worked the missing stitch back up to the needle.

"It's easier to pick up a stitch as soon as it's dropped than it is to go back and get it later. Sometimes you have to take your work out all the way back to the mistake."

Grandma handed the knitting back to me and picked up her own work. "I remember that I never had much patience with doing things over when I was your age. In fact, one time I decided not to bother, and I was sorry about it afterward."

"Were you knitting something?" I asked.

"No," Grandma replied. "It was a sampler I was embroidering. It was in the spring, just before school was out."

The teacher had announced early in the year that there would be a contest. Everyone in the room would enter some kind of handwork to be judged by the school-board members the last day of school. The prize would be a book—and we didn't have many books of our own.

I determined that I would win the prize, and announced my intentions at the supper table the very day we found out about the contest.

' "I'm going to have a new book the last day of school," I said to the family.

"You are?" Pa said. "Are you saving all your money to get one?"

Pa knew that I didn't have any money, or any prospects of getting any, so I knew he was just fooling.

I shook my head. "No, I'll get a new book for winning the contest for the best handwork."

"What makes you think you'll win?" Roy asked. "I'm going to enter the contest too, you know."

"Yes, but I'm a more carefuller worker than you are," I replied.

"You mean 'a more careful' worker," Ma corrected me. Then she eyed me thoughtfully. "On the other hand, you aren't the most careful worker I've ever seen."

"I will be this time," I said confidently. "I won't hurry, and I'll take lots of pains to do it just right. And besides, I already prayed about it. I asked God to let me win."

This seemed to settle the matter for me. Since I knew the Lord answered prayer, I had no question about winning. Even when Pa reminded me that God wasn't going to do the work for me, I was still sure I would win.

The next day Sarah Jane and I decided that we would enter the sewing division and make a sampler. Between our two homes we would surely find enough bright-colored thread to work with, and a square of white linen was not hard to come by.

"What are you going to say on yours?" Sarah Jane asked. "I haven't decided yet," I replied. "What are you putting on yours?"

"I think I'll put 'Home is where the heart is' and make a border of hearts and flowers. Doesn't that sound pretty?"

"Yes, it does," I said. "I think I'd like something about friends on mine."

"How about 'A friend loveth at all times'?" Sarah Jane suggested. "That was our Bible verse last week."

"That's good. I'll use that. We'd better practice on something else first though. The one for the contest has to be perfect."

Sarah Jane agreed, and we began drawing the patterns for our letters and flowers. When we finally had them just right, we carefully transferred the work to the cloth.

In the weeks that followed we used every spare moment we had to embroider our samplers. I did the border first, with little flowers and leaves, and I thought it looked quite pretty. Ma agreed.

"You are doing better than I expected, Mabel," she said. "If you do as well on the words, you may have a chance at winning that book."

"Of course I'll win, Ma! Sarah Jane's looks nice, but it's not as smooth as mine. She said so herself."

"Just don't be disappointed if you aren't first," Ma warned. "It doesn't pay to be too sure of yourself."

But I was sure of myself. I just knew that mine was going to be the best one.

About two weeks before the end of the term, Sarah Jane and I sat on the porch, working on our samplers.

"I have just two more words to do, then my name and the date," I announced, and I spread the sampler out on my lap to inspect it again. Sarah Jane looked at it carefully; then an odd expression came over her face.

"Something is wrong, Mabel," she said.

"There can't be!" I exclaimed. "What is it?"

"I think you spelled friend wrong."

Horrified, I looked at the word. Sure enough, I had written "A FREND LOVETH AT . . . "

"Oh, no! What can I do to fix it up?"

"You'll have to take it out, back to there," Sarah Jane said. "There isn't room to squeeze in an i without looking funny."

"But I don't have time to take it all out," I cried. "Besides it will leave holes where I sewed it, and that will look worse!"

Sarah Jane was sorry, and so was I. It was either take the stitching all out, and probably not finish in time, or leave it in and hope the judges wouldn't notice, but I knew I wouldn't win.

Ma was sympathetic. "I think you should put an i in here, even though it looks crowded. That would be better than having the judges believe you thought it was spelled correctly. As many times as you've looked at that sampler, I can't understand how you missed it."

"That's what Sarah Jane said too," I replied sadly. "When I looked at it, I just thought how pretty it was. I wasn't expecting anything to be wrong. I did so want to win that book! I was sure the Lord would answer my prayers."

"Maybe you should have prayed to do your best rather than to win, Mabel. The Lord is willing to help us, but we need to do all we can with the intelligence He gave us." '

I knew Ma was right, but I was pretty sad the day I took the sampler to school. The teacher agreed that if it hadn't been for that mistake, it might have been a winner.

The last day of school was exciting, anyway. When the contest winners were announced, Roy was in first place in the wood-carving division with a small squirrel he had whittled.

"You can be the first one to read my book, Mabel," he offered generously. "Maybe next year you can enter again and win your own prize."

"That was a good lesson for me," Grandma said. "I was often careless after that, but I was careful not to be quite so positive about what I would do again. And I never blamed the Lord for my mistakes, either!"

Grandma, you never told me you dressed a pig in baby's clothes! What did you do that for?" I asked wondering why my commonsense grandma would do such a thing, even when she was a little girl like me.

"Oh, my friend Sarah Jane and I should have been whipped for that prank! We frightened poor Mrs. Carter nearly out of her senses. If she hadn't been such a kind, forgiving lady, I'm sure we would have been punished severely."

"Tell me what happened, Grandma," I begged.

"After I get the bread in the oven, we'll sit on the porch. You can help me pick over the beans for supper."

Soon we were seated on the porch, and Grandma began.

This story happened right on this porch. At least, most of it did. It was a beautiful day in the spring, shortly after hoof was over for the year. Sarah Jane and I were wandering about, trying to think of the best way to spend the day. We had about decided on a trip to the woods to look for berries when Ma changed our minds.

' "Don't go too far from the house, girls," she called. "Mrs. Carter is coming to spend the day sewing, and she's bringing her new baby. I know you'll want to see her."

Of course we did. There weren't a lot of new babies in our community, and Sarah Jane and I both loved them. We even thought Mrs. Carter might let us play with little Lucy. So we hung around the gate and watched the road for the first sight of the Carters' wagon.

Very soon it appeared, and we watched Mr. Carter drive up to the front porch. After helping Mrs. Carter down from the front seat, he went to the back of the wagon and took out a beautiful baby buggy. Sarah Jane and I had never seen one so fine before.

"Oh, Mrs. Carter," I said, "may we push Lucy around in the buggy?"

"We'll be very, very careful," Sarah Jane chimed in.

Mrs. Carter smiled at us. "I don't know why not. Just don't go too far from the house. She should go to sleep soon; then you can put the buggy here in the shade, close to the porch."

She laid the baby down, and after admiring her for a few minutes, we began to push the buggy slowly around the yard.

"Wouldn't it be fun to have a real baby to take care of?" I said.

"Oh, yes!" Sarah Jane replied. "Our dolls are nice, but they don't move around and cry like a baby does."

After what seemed like a very short time, the baby went to sleep. We took a few more turns around the house and even shook the buggy a little to see if she might wake up. Finally we decided to put the buggy in the shade as Mrs. Carter had told us to. Then we sat on the edge of the porch and admired the pretty dress and bonnet the baby wore.

"She looks just like a little doll, doesn't she?" Sarah Jane said. "Your doll, Emily, is just about that size. Shall we get our dolls and play with them?"

I agreed, and we brought our dolls and doll clothes back out to the porch where we could watch the baby as she slept. After a few minutes, Sarah Jane tired of the dolls.

"I'd rather dress something that moves a little," she said, and then spotting the cat walking across the yard, she suggested, "Maybe we could dress the cat."

"You might be able to put clothes on your cat," I said, "but you'll never get a dress and bonnet on this one. He's awfully particular about what he does."

"I suppose Pep wouldn't like it either," Sarah Jane said, figuring our dog was the next best choice.

"I'm sure of it," I replied. "Besides, his head is too big to fit this bonnet."

We sat for a few moments longer, swinging our feet bacl and forth, when suddenly a brilliant thought came to me.

"I know! How about one of the new baby pigs in the barn? All they do is sleep, but at least they're alive. Shall we get one?"

"Oh, yes, let's!" Sarah Jane exclaimed. "That would be just right for the doll clothes."

So we hurried out to the barn to pick out the cleanest pinkest piglet we could find. Sure enough, when we had put the dress on that pig and tied the bonnet under its chin, we had what we thought was the next best thing to a real baby.

"Isn't that cute?" Sarah Jane said. "We should have thought of this before." She eyed the buggy, which little Lucy was sleeping in. "I think we should take our baby for a ride."

"We can't put the pig in with Mrs. Carter's baby!" I protested. "She wouldn't like that. Besides, Lucy's still asleep. We might wake her up."

Sarah Jane thought that over. "Why don't you put the baby on your bed to sleep while we take the pig for a ride? Mrs. Carter wouldn't care if you did that."

"Okay, she'll be comfortable there." I lifted the baby carefully from the buggy, and with Sarah Jane opening the loors fog me, I tiptoed quietly up to my room and put Lucy down on my bed.

"You'd better put her right in the middle so she won't roll off," Sarah Jane suggested.

"She's not big enough to roll over," I said, but I put her as lose to the center of the bed as I could and covered her with a blanket. Then we tiptoed out and closed the door.

"There," Sarah Jane said. "She'll probably sleep all morning. Let's take the pig for a ride."

So we ran back outside, put the pig in the buggy, and covered it with a doll blanket. It promptly fell asleep, and we had a great time pretending to be fine ladies strolling through town with their beautiful baby.

Very shortly Ma came to the kitchen door. "Girls, it would be nice if you would run to the woods and gather some berries for dinner. It won't be long until it's time to eat. Is the baby still asleep?"

"Yes, Ma." I replied. "She's asleep."

"Good. Be sure to leave the buggy in the shade. This small bucket should hold enough berries," she said as she handed us a container.

There was nothing for us to do but take the bucket and start for the woods.

"We'd better hurry," I said, realizing what might happen if we were gone too long.

We picked the berries as fast as we could, not even stopping to eat a few now and then as we always did. Still it seemed as though the bucket would never fill up. At last we had enough and started back to the house.

As soon as we reached the clearing and could see the house, we knew we were in trouble.

"Oh, no!" Sarah Jane cried as we surveyed the scene before us.

Everyone seemed to be in motion. Roy was galloping toward the woods where we stood. Reuben was racing for the barn, carrying something that looked like a small pig in doll clothes, and Pep was running between the two of them, not sure whom to follow. The only still figures were Mrs. Carter, who was lying on the porch steps, and Ma, who was kneeling beside her, wiping her friend's face with a cloth.