"What for, I wonder? She lives alone, so there's nobody to be cross to her," said Alice Robinson, who had troubles of her own. "I guess it's the things that have happened in bygone days." (Rebecca had an incurably literary style in conducting meetings, and indulged unconsciously in nights of sentiment and rhetoric.) "Her mother and father died and her brother embezzled and Aunt Jane thinks that a gentleman played with her feelings and she's never been the same since." "'Played with her feelings!' What's that?" inquired the unsentimental Emma Jane Perkins. "Gave her hopes and then married another without saying so much as 'Boo,'" explained Rebecca. "And there was a sister that did something dreadful, I don't exactly know what," hinted Candace darkly; "but she lives out West and Miss Roxy writes and writes to her, but she never answers." "And she was the one Miss Rosy loved best of all," added Rebecca with a tear in her voice. "I asked her yesterday why she didn't sit in the kitchen with a window open and not in the little front entry that'll hardly hold her rocking-chair. She said if anybody should come any time suddenly she could get down the steps quicker to meet them. She never comes down to any of us, and I know it's the sister she means. Oh, dear!" "Mother's awful sorry for her," was Persis's comment. "But everybody's kind of lost sympathy for her because she lives so out of creation, and it's so much work to get there." "Well"--and Rebecca leaned toward the group confidentially--"I was thinking about it night before last as I was leaning over the gate. Now look the other way, girls, and don't laugh while I explain. All of a sudden I thought the pieces of our quilt will be scraps of dresses; why not take those that we, and all the other people, have had the loveliest times in? We could put them everywhere but round the edges, everywhere they'd touch Miss Roxy, I mean--on her neck and shoulders and arms and waist and knees. It'd be a quilt of happiness then; that's my idea!" And Rebecca waited with flushing cheeks and downcast eyes for the verdict. There was a breathless pause of half a minute. Emma Jane seldom moved her mind in the presence of Rebecca, feeling that competition was impossible; still she was the first to break the silence with her customary ejaculation: "I think it would be perfectly elegant!" Alice Robinson nodded her curly head responsively and said: '"Quilt of Happiness!' It sounds lovely, if we don't have to tell anybody grown up who would say it's silly." "But can happiness strike _into_ anybody?" inquired Candace, who, as the daughter of an Orthodox deacon, went to the foundation of things. Rebecca was inclined to evade the direct question, inasmuch as her cherished idea had no real basis save one of pure sentiment.