[Frontispiece: RUFUS LIKED TO WATCH THE DIMPLE COME AND GO IN JENNY'S CHEEK.] THE QUILT OF HAPPINESS CREEPING JENNY _And Other New England Stories_ BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN AUTHOR OF REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS, ETC. NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1901 AND 1917, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY MCCALL COMPANY (INC.) COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. CONTENTS CREEPING JENNY THE AUTHOR'S READING AT BIXBY CENTRE THE QUILT OF HAPPINESS MATT MILLIKEN'S IMPROVEMENTS CREEPING JENNY Jenny Lane lived in a shabby little farmhouse on the Back Nippin' Road that led from Riverboro to Moderation Village. The house was small and compact and as neat as wax inside, for there Jenny was Master of her fate and Captain of her soul. Outside, alas, things were different. There was only the shell of a former stable; the shed was tumbling down, and, when rain descended in anything worse than gentle showers, Jenny's "indoors" looked like a syndicate of milk pans, the leaks were so many and the dripping of water so continuous. It had been that way for three years, ever since the autumn that her mother had died; and her father, who had followed his wife in everything, followed her to the grave a month later. His last words to his daughter had been: "I'm sorry to leave you alone, Jenny, but I'd feel better if only I'd left you shingled. Your mother and me was laying up and laying up ever since we got married. We bought the house and field, paid off the mortgage and gave you good schooling. We are furnished up as well as most o' the neighbors, but when your mother's health got slim and my strength begun to fail, we couldn't seem to get any farther than meat, drink, and clothes for the three of us. The buildings couldn't be kept up, that was the long and short of it." "I know, I know, Father. Haven't I seen how hard you tried?" "Now I'm on my death-bed," said the old man. "There's money enough in the bank to buy the shingles, but God knows whether you can afford to hire a man to put 'em on, labor's so scarce and so high." "Don't worry, Father! I don't want your last days troubled with fears about me and the roof. I'm twenty-two and I can earn my living somehow, somewhere!" "'Tisn't so easy to earn your living and keep your buildings shingled too!" sighed her father. "Maybe not, but I'll do it, in course of time!" said Jenny stoutly. "I've heard enough, all my life, about shingles; also about clapboards and paint. There isn't a young man in the neighborhood that I'd want to go to church with, but if one of them should ever chance to ask me to have him, I'd say: 'Shingle the house and I'll say yes!'"