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i8 Tl
1 . The Family
. SEALED ORDERS.
Does the captain of a warship,
Bound for parts to him unknown,
Because his orders are all sealed,
Fret and fume and groan?
No! he knows that those above him
Are able, tried and true;
And whatever be his orders?
That right giartlv will hp do.
And the able-bodied seamen,
Mariner and all the rest;
They know the course the master sets
Is sure to be the best.
Am I to doubt my Master
When my course I can not see?
Why struggle for the helm
When I know he is leading me?
?Selected.
, \S THE
PINEAPPLE APRON.
By L. M. Montgomery.
All the girls in our class that winter
were crazy over lace patterns. The fifthclass
girls were making patchwork quilts,
onH tho thirH rinse were collecting nost
age stamps; but we went in for crocheting
lace, and our greatest ambition was
to get a pattern nobody else had. We
felt so triumphant when we succeeded
and so vpxed and mortified when some
other girl came out with it, too; only we
never showe that we were vexed; we
just said we were tired of that pattern,
it was getting so common, and we never
did any more of it.
We took our lace to school and worked
at recesses. Josie Pate was actually
caught crocheting under her desk in
school hours once; but she never did it
again, for the teacher made her copy
out the pattern and give it to every otho >
wJrl in fho olQOQ
gill 1U I.UU V.WMM.
Peggy Reid was my chum, and we always
lent our patterns to each other at
first; but one day Peggy came to school
with an elegant new spotted muslin
apron on, trimmed with the sweetest
edging in brand-new design. She said
her aunt out West had sent it to her, and
all the girls were in raptures over it. I
thought it real mean in Peggy never to
have shown it to me, and she must have
had it quite a while to have crocheted
such a long piece of lace; for the apron
was frilled and the lace sewn on the
frill, and Peggy hasn't much spare time,
for there are six children in her family
younger than she is, and she is only
twelve.
i didn't say anyinmg, nowever, ior i
thought that perhaps Peggy would offer
to show me the pattern when we walked
home from school that night. But she
never so much as mentioned It, and so,
of course, I didn't either; and Peggy
told Julia Simmons the next day that I
was real Jealous of her new apron, because
I'd never said a word about It.
Julia told me, of course?Julia is the
worst tell-tale in school?and I felt that
Peggy had acted mean right through. I
was pretty cool and dignified to her after
IE PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
that, I can tell you; but I didn't stop
speaking to her, of course, for I wouldu't
have shown for anything that I cared
whether she gave me the pattern or not.
Meanwhile, all the other girls seemed to
be constantly discovering new patterns,
but I hadn't a bit of luck that way.
Then a really brilliant idea struck me
?all at once, one day in geography
class, when I was trying to bound Brazil.
It was: "Why net invent a pattern of
your very own?" 1 was so excited I
could hardly wait until school was out,
and then I raced home and shut myself
up in the garret.
I can't tell you what a time I had inventing
that pattern. It took me three
weeks. I got right down to the foot of my
class, and lost marks in everything, because
I was thinking of it all the time.
Mother said it wasn't safe to send me on
an errand, because I was sure to make
a muddle of it; and some nights I actually
couldn't sleep. But in the end I
succeeded. It was a pineapple design,
but not a bit like any of the other pineapple
patterns the girls had, and it was
really sweetly pretty. None of the other
girls had ever thought of such a thing.
T T ? ' -
. U?v.usu * nuuiau l if11 tut;in at nrst
that I had invented it; it would be fun to
aee them trying to get it, and hunting
. old magazines through, and writing away
to all their friends' for it?and I knowing
all the time that there was no other
copy of it in the world.
I crocheted enough of it to trim an
apron, and then one day I wore the apron
to school. The girls were wild over the
lace, and said it was the prettiest pineapple
pattern they had ever seen; but
Peggy never so much as referred to it.
Of course, nobody could get the Dattern,
and soon it got around that there
was some mystery about it. Peggy told
Julia that some one would soon get hold
of it, and when Julia told me, I said it
wouldn't be Peggy Reld, anyhow. Julia
told Peggy that, and Peggy said she
could find out that pattern in a fortnight,
if it was worth finding out, but it wasn't.
I walked home from school with Maggie
Brown that night.
The next day was washing day, and
mother washed my pineapple apron and
hung it out on the line. It was a lovely
moonlight night when we went to bed,
clear as day; but before morning it was
quite a snowstorm. When I went out to
bring the clothes in after breakfast my
pineapple apron was gone. Mother said
it must have blown away, and I looked
everywhere, but couldn't find it.
Peggy wasn't in school all the next
week. She was sick with a cold, but 1
didn't know that, or, of course, I would
have gone over to see her. I thought
she just had to stay home to help her
mother. She often had to.
But one morning, when I went to
school, there was Peggy in the midst of
a group of girls, all laughing and talking.
As soon as I went in Josie Pate called
out:
"You said nobody would ever get your
pineapple pattern, Alice, but Peggy has."
Then thev all stood hnok nnd thora
UTH December 29, igog.
was Peggy, looking so triumphant, and
wealing an apron trimmed with my pineapple
pattern lace.
Oh, I can tell you I Just flared up. It
was really too much.
"Peggy Reid, you took my aprcm off
the line, and that is how you got the
pattern," I cried. "You couldn't have
gotten it any other way, because I invented
that pattern myself!"
Of course, I didn't mean that Peggy
stole the apron. I meajit she'd Just borrowed
it without asking to get the pattern,
and a pretty mean thing I thought
it. Peggy turned red, and then she
turned white.
"I guess I'm not a thief, Alice Morley,"
she snapped out. "I don't know where
your old apron is, and I don't care.
You're Just mad because I've got the nat
tern, when you said 1 couldn't, and I
don't believe you made it out of your
own head."
Miss Westcott came in then, and we
couldn't say anything more. But from
that out I w^s done with Peggy. It was
dreadfully lonesome, and none of the
other girls were really half so nice as
Peggy; but I thought she had behaved
dreadfully, and I vowed I'd never for-'
give her. I always walked home with
Maggie Brown, and 1 never spoke to or
looked at Peggy.
Things went on like this unfil the middle
of the winter. The pineapple lace
fuss all seemed far away by that time,
and I beean to wish T hntin't cm* an
over it. After all, perhaps Peggy only
meant it as a joke on me for boasting
that nobody could ever get that pattern;
and although she certainly had ben horrid,
I had been?a little?horrid, too
But the mischief was done, and how It
could be undone I couldn't pee, for I
was bound I wouldn't be the first to try
to make up, and Peggy went by me
with her head in the air. The very sight
of a crochet hook made me sick.
One day mother got a letter from Miss.
Newell, and everybody in our house went
straightway into a red-hot state of excitement.
Miss Newell is an old school friend
of mother's, and she is a famous writer.
ner doors are splendid, and Peggy and
I Just revelled in them. Peggy always
thought It wonderful that I should have
a mother who was Miss Newell's friend,
and I had always promised that if Miss
Newell ever came to visit mother I'd have
Peggy over to meet her.
And now Miss Newell was really coming.
She wrote that she would be passing
through Bingham Tuesday, and would
hriva aiif ^a
... .Mb bv H^ouuiu uciiveeil irttlQB lO
have tea with mother, for the sake of
Auld Lang Syne. This was Monday already,
so Miss Newell would be here the
next day. I was too excited to eat or
study, or do a single thing, except .plead
with mother to let me put my front hair
up in curlers that night. . Mother doesn't
approve of it as a frequent occurrence,
but I felt that I simply could not face
Miss Newell with straight hair, for al!
her heroines have curly- hair.
Then I thought of Peggy and my old
promise to hen I was in a regular fix.