" She slipped the money into his hand, kissed him,
and bade him hurry home again; and Johnny, rushing back to his
impatient creditors, felt that it was something very solemn indeed
which had just taken place.
[Illustration: "'DEAR AS IT IS TO ME, IT IS NOT SO DEAR AS THE KEEPING
OF MY WORD.'"]
Johnny's little room at the head of the stairs was heated by the hall
stove, so that the door stood open all day long. When the new quilt
was folded across the foot of his bed, it was the first thing that
caught the eye of every one passing up the stairs.
Rob made up a verse about it, which he sang so often to tease Johnny
that the first note was enough to make the child bristle up for a
fight:
"This is the patchwork all forlorn,
Made by the boys in Marshall's barn.
The dog and the cat and even the rat
Had a hand in that--
A hand in the Quilt that Jack built!"
"You needn't make fun of it," said Rhoda one day. "It has held me to
my word more than once. Yesterday, for instance. I would have broken
my promise to poor little Miss Sara Grimes, to help her entertain her
old ladies, and would have accepted Harry Dilling's invitation, which
came later, to go sleighing.
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