they had called him some other name. His parents were very poor,
hard-working people, and Julia had much coarser clothes than the other
boys, and plainer food, but he was always cheerful about it, and never
seemed to think it at all hard that he could not have a velvet coat
like the Mayor's son, or carry cakes for lunch to school like the
lawyer's little boy.

But perhaps the greatest cross which Julia had to bear, and the
one from which he stood in the greatest danger of getting into the
Patchwork School, was his Grandmothers. I don't mean to say that
grandmothers are to be considered usually as crosses. A dear old lady
seated with her knitting beside the fire, is a pleasant person to
have in the house. But Julia had four, and he had to hunt for their
spectacles, and pick up their balls of yarn so much that he got very
little time to play. It was an unusual thing, but the families on both
sides were very long-lived, and there actually were four grandmothers;
two great ones, and two common ones; two on each side of the
fireplace, with their knitting work, in Julia's home. They were
nice old ladies, and Julia loved them dearly, but they lost their
spectacles all the time, and were always dropping their balls of yarn,
and it did make a deal of work for one boy to do. He could have hunted
up spectacles for one Grandmother, but when it came to four, and one
was always losing hers while he was finding another's, and one ball of
yarn would drop and roll off, while he was picking up another--well,
it was really bewildering at times. Then he had to hold the skeins of
yarn for them to wind, and his arms used to ache, and he could hear
the boys shouting at a game of ball outdoors, maybe. But he never
refused to do anything his Grandmothers asked him to, and did it
pleasantly, too; and it was not on that account he got into the
Patchwork School.