Patience's fertile imagination construed it into a dire weapon of
punishment.

The Squire was sitting at his old cherry desk. He turned around and
looked at Patience sharply from under his shaggy, overhanging brows.

Then he fumbled in his pocket and brought something out--it was the
sixpence. Then he began talking. Patience could not have told what he
said. Her mind was entirely full of what she had to say. Somehow
she stammered out the story: how she had been afraid to go to Nancy
Gookin's, and how she had lost the sixpence her uncle had given her,
and how Martha had said she told a fib. Patience trembled and gasped
out the words, and curtesied, once in a while, when the Squire said
something.

"Come here," said he, when he had sat for a minute or two, taking in
the facts of the case.

To Patience's utter astonishment, Squire Bean was laughing, and
holding out the sixpence.

"Have you got the palm-leaf string?"

"Yes, sir," replied Patience, curtesying.

"Well, you may take this home, and put in the palm-leaf string, and
use it for a marker in your book--but don't you spend it again."

"No, sir." Patience curtesied again.