Aunt Olivia took afternoon naps with punctilious regularity--Aunt
Olivia herself was punctilious regularity. At half past one, day
upon day, she hung out the dish towel, hung up her kitchen apron,
and walked with unswerving course into her bedroom. There, disposed
upon the dainty bed in rigid lines of unrest, she rested. The naps
were often long ones.

A little after the afternoon that Rebecca Mary spent at the minister's
the birthday quilt was finished. The thousandth tiny piece was neatly
over-'n'-overed to its gorgeous expanse. But Rebecca Mary was not
content. She longed to make it complete. She wanted to surprise
Aunt 'Livia with it, as Aunt 'Livia on that momentous birthday of
her own had surprised her with the little fluff-ball of yellow down
that had grown into Thomas Jefferson. That had been such a beautiful
surprise, but this--Aunt 'Livia had seen the quilt so many, many times!
She had taught Rebecca Mary's stiff little fingers to set the first
stitches in it; she had made her rip out this purple square and that
pink-checked one, and this one and that one and that. Oh, Aunt 'Livia
was ACQUAINTED with the quilt! It would not be much of a surprise.

But Rebecca Mary set her little pointed chin between her little brown
palms and pondered, and out of the pondering grew a plan so ambitious
and so daring that Rebecca Mary gasped in the throes of it. But she
held her ground and entertained it intrepidly. She even grew on
friendly terms with it in the end. Here was a way to surprise Aunt
'Livia; Rebecca Mary would do it! That it would entail an almost
endless amount of work did not daunt her: Rebecca Mary was a Plummer,
and Plummers were not to be daunted. The long vista of patient hours
of trying labor that the plan opened up before her set her blood