she turned back to the puzzle of the little trousers. It had been
in her mind at first to express sorrow at Rhoda's being unfortunately
away--and the boys. Now she was glad she hadn't, for it was quite
plain enough that the visitor had not come to spend the afternoon
with the minister's children, but with the minister's wife.

"It isn't she that's young--it's I," thought the minister's wife,
with kind, laughing eyes. "She's old enough to be my mother."
"How old are you, dear?" she added, aloud.

"Me? I guess you mean Aunt 'Livia, don't you? It's Aunt 'Livia's
birthday I'm making it for, it's going to be a present. Once she
gave me a present on my birthday."

Once!--the minister's wife remembered Rhoda's birthdays and the boys'.
Taken altogether, such a host of little birthdays! But this little
old, old visitor seemed to have had but one.

"My birthday is two days quicker than Aunt 'Livia's is," volunteered
the visitor, sociably. "We're 'most twins, you see. Aunt 'Livia
was fifty-six that time she gave me the present. She's agoing to be
fifty-nine when I give her this quilt--it's taken me ever since to
make it."

The minister's wife looked up from her cutting. So Rebecca Mary was
only fifty-nine!

"It's quite a long quilt," sighed Rebecca Mary. But pride woke in her
eyes as she gazed out on the splendors of the green and purple sea.
"A Thousand Quilt has so many stitches in it, but when you sew'em all