“I promised your grandmother to tell you about this bed-quilt, which ’pears kind of out of place in here, but she sent it over—the old lady did—thinkin’ you’d be pleased to know that your mother did it when she was a little girl, and that many of them is pieces of her own gowns she used to wear. I remember her myself with this one on; it was her Sunday frock, and she looked so pretty in it;” and Mrs. Jerry touched a square of the blue and white checked calico which had once formed a part of Margaret Ferguson’s best dress. “I don’t think I quite understand you,” said Reinette, who was wholly ignorant of that strange fashion of cutting cloth in bits for the sake of sewing them up again. But one idea was perfectly clear to her. Mrs. Jerry had seen her mother, and her great dark eyes were full of eager inquiry as she continued: “You have seen mother; you knew her when she was a little girl; knew her for certain and true?” There was still a doubt—a rebelling in Reinette’s mind against the new relatives, but Mrs. Jerry knew nothing of it, nor guessed that Reinette was not fully acquainted with all the particulars of her mother’s early life and marriage. “Yes,” she answered, “Margaret Ferguson and I was about the same age; mabby I am two years or so the oldest; but we went to school together and was in the same class, only she was always at the head and I mostly at the foot, and we picked huckleberries together many a time out in old General Hetherton’s lot, never dreaming that she would one day marry Mr. Fred. I beg your pardon, your father I meant,” she added hastily, as she met the proud flash of Reinette’s eyes, and understood that to speak of her father as _Fred_ was an indignity not to be tolerated. But for this slip of the tongue Reinette might have questioned her further of her mother, but she could not do it now, though she returned to the bed-quilt and managed to get a tolerably clear comprehension with regard to it. “Made every stitch of it and I warrant she pricked herself over it many a time,” Mrs. Jerry said, and being fairly launched on her subject she was going on rapidly when Reinette suddenly interrupted her with: “Yes, yes, I know: I see; mother did it. Mother’s hands have touched it; and now go away, please, quick, and leave me alone.” She pointed to the door, and Mrs. Jerry went swiftly out, half frightened at the look in the young girl’s eyes as she bade her leave the room. “It must be true; everybody and everything confirms it, and I have lost my ideal mother,” Reinette whispered to herself as she closed the door after Mrs. Jerry. Yes, she had lost her ideal mother, but the loss had not been without its gain, and Reinette felt that this was so as she knelt in her anguish by the bedside and laid her hot, tear-stained cheek against the coarse fabric which had been her mother’s work.