Then she discovered a smaller wheel, with a motto carved around its rim in quaint lettering, which Linda studied over a long time before she made it out--“Eat not the Bread of Idleness.” She learned afterward that this was a flax-wheel, on which Deacon Burbank’s mother used to spin the thread to weave her linen sheets. Beside the flax-wheel stood a superannuated chest of drawers, with dingy brass handles, which had once, no doubt, been a fine piece of furniture. Then there were broken-down chairs, with straight, stiff backs; queer, cracked jugs and bottles, and painted teacups with the handles broken off; and funny old spelling-books and school-readers, all inscribed, in beautiful handwriting, on their yellow fly-leaves: “John Burbank, his book.” Linda knew that the John Burbank who had learned his lessons from these old books must have been the deacon “when he was a boy,” and not her young friend, Johnny. There were several old-fashioned wooden chests among the treasures of this delightful garret, and Linda hesitated to open them at first; but finally she called to mind that she had been given permission to “rummage” as much as she pleased. One chest, painted green, stood near the narrow window, which threw a checkered square of sunshine upon the garret floor, and as Linda raised the cover she gave a little scream of rapture, for it seemed almost as if she had found a broken rainbow, there was such a glitter of gay colors in the sunlight. “Oh! _oh!_” she cried, “what lovely, _lovely_ pieces for a crazy quilt!” For the old chest was nearly filled with scraps of silk and satin of every shape and size, from bits not over an inch wide to the large, three-cornered pieces, of which there seemed to be a great number, left in cutting trimming-folds “on the bias,” as Linda knew, for she had seen many such remnants proudly displayed by those of her girl friends who happened to be in the good graces of Miss Cranshaw, the village dressmaker. But such brocades and stripes, such “plaid” and “watered” and “figured” silks, such brilliant shades of color as she found among the contents of that chest, her eyes had never looked upon before. “I wonder if these are pieces of Deacon Burbank’s mother’s dresses?” thought Linda, as she turned them over, exclaiming, every other minute, “Oh, how pretty!” or “Oh, what a beauty!” for every new piece that she took up seemed prettier than the last. “Why, she must have had as many as Queen Victoria. Why _don’t_ they wear such colors now? Most of the silk dresses that Miss Cranshaw makes are black, or brown, or sage-green, or some other sober shade; but these are all so bright. Oh, what a lovely blue!” “It is a handsome piece of silk, ain’t it? That was the dress Miss Polly Newcome wore to the inaugeration ball at Washington, ’most forty years ago. They don’t have no such silks in these days.”