Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 1.djvu/258

Rh 'Well, it is tiresome, isn't it, Aunt Pen?'

'Sometimes; but we all have to make patchwork, my dear, and do the best we can with the pieces given us.'

'Do we?' and Patty opened her eyes in great astonishment at this new idea.

'Our lives are patchwork, and it depends on us a good deal how the bright and dark bits get put together so that the whole is neat, pretty, and useful when it is done,' said Aunt Pen soberly.

'Deary me, now she is going to preach,' thought Patty; but she rather liked Aunt Pen's preachments, for a good deal of fun got mixed up with the moralising; and she was so good herself that children could never say in their naughty little minds, 'You are just as bad as we, so you needn't talk to us, ma'am.'

'I gave you that patchwork to see what you