“Crazy quilt! That’s about all I’ve heard for the last six months! I should think you girls had all gone crazy yourselves!” ejaculated 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 nobody else. Besides, they are all making crazy quilts of their own. I would start one with papa’s old silk handkerchief and his Association 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 assorted 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.”