Ben saw she was close to tears. Kate wept easily at many things trifling and great; this was no trifle. What she referred to was a labor of years, a sampler intended (some day) for the wall of Mr. Kenny's study. For all Ben knew it might have been started before he was born. Kate herself couldn't say when she began it, as she couldn't say for sure how old she was, or what year it was she came as a redemptioner from England. To Kate all the past telescoped in a half-reality, and memories overflowing in her talk could seldom be closely tied to conventional mileposts of time. Ben had seen the incomplete sampler, shyly unfolded from a workbasket at times when Mr. Kenny was away in the city. The border was almost done, she said. From the bottom on either side rose branches, ivy idealized, stitched in springtime greens with immense pains and skill; at the top the branches met, interlocking as leaves in nature do, contending but sharing sunlight. That part, she claimed, was easy--why, you just stitched it: so, and so. But the motto caused her endless grief, since she had never been taught to write or read. She knew the alphabet; with desperate trouble she could fit together elements of it indicating words. Ben wondered how she had found courage for such a project before he and Reuben were present to aid her. But she was still troubled even with their aid. No motto was ever quite good enough on second thought. Occasionally she changed the lovely border too. Once Ben had found her rocking in her sewing chair and weeping because, she said, a brown thread among the leaves was the _wrong_ brown and must be picked out, every stitch, and that by candlelight. Her eyes hurt--weren't as good as they used to be. "Woman dear," said Reuben, "you've gone and lost the paper." She blinked in sorrow at the hominy and sausage she set before him. "That I have, and I don't understand how a body _can_ be so heedless. I did, I had it in my basket, and then I vow I must've wrapped something in it, maybe a skein, and put it away somewhere, _I_ don't know where--why, my mind's light, light as a whore's promise, I just don't _think_ good." Ben reached out to pat her fat floury hand, as Reuben said: "Then we'll draw you a fresh one. A nothing for such scholars as me and my little brother--only, bruit it not abroad that ever I said such a thing. You know, Kate, the sin of vanity in us--sad, sad." She chuckled, dashing a comfortable tear from a bulging cheek, and bounced away to deal with a fresh emergency. Fragments of yesterday's chicken sat on a side table waiting a destiny in soup, and the lean yellow tomcat, Mr. Eccles, had wandered in nursing a sordid plot, one easily detected and swiftly refuted by a whisk of Kate's apron. He came over to rub Ben's leg rather grimly, knowing well enough that breakfast sausage is not cat-food. "Which motto was it, Kate?--believe I've lost track."