Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

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.