The Quilt That Jack Built / Annie Fellows Johnston

"Johnny make a quilt!" repeated Rob Marshall, with a shout of laughter. "I'd as soon expect to see a wild buffalo knitting mittens!"

"But you're not to speak of it outside the family, Rob," his mother hastened to say, "and you must not tease the little fellow. You older children have ways of earning pocket-money,--Rhoda with her painting, and you with your bent iron work, but Johnny hasn't had a cent of income all fall. You know when your father explained what a hard winter this would be, and said we must economize in every way possible, Johnny offered to give up the little amount I allowed him every week for chores. He has been doing his work ever since without pay. Now, he is wild to buy Todd Walters' rifle. He can get it for only three dollars, and I want him to have it if possible. He has cheerfully gone without so many things this fall. He followed me around the house all morning, begging me to think of some way in which he could earn the money, until, in desperation, I suggested that he piece a quilt for me at a cent a block. To my great surprise, he consented eagerly. He usually scorns anything that looks like girls' work."

The Legend of the Bleeding-Heart / Annie Fellows Johnston

In days of old, when all things in the Wood had speech, there lived within its depths a lone Flax-spinner. She was a bent old creature, and ill to look upon, but all the tongues of all the forest leaves were ever kept a-wagging with the story of her kindly deeds. And even to this day they sometimes whisper low among themselves (because they fain would hold in mind so sweet a tale) the story of her kindness to the little orphan, Olga.

'Twas no slight task the old Flax-spinner took upon herself, the day she brought the helpless child to share the shelter of her thatch. The Oak outside her door held up his arms in solemn protest.

Mildred's Inheritance / Annie Fellows Johnston

As the good ship Majestic went steaming away from the Irish coast, one sunny September morning, three pretty college girls leaned over the railing of the upper deck, watching the steerage passengers below. With faces turned to the shore which they might never see again, the lusty-throated emigrants were sending their song of "Farewell to Erin" floating mournfully back across the water.

"Oh, look at that poor old grandmother!" exclaimed one of the girls. "There; that one sitting on a coil of rope with a shawl over her gray head. The pitiful way she looks back to land would make me homesick, too, if I were not already on my way home, with all my family on board, and all the fun of the sophomore year ahead of me. Let's go down to the other end of the deck, where it is more cheerful."

Just Her Way / Annie Fellows Johnston

"Look out of the window, Judith! Quick! Mrs. Avery is going away!" Judith Windham, bending over the sewing-machine in her bedroom, started as her little sister's voice came piping shrilly up the stairs, and leaving her chair she leaned out of the old-fashioned casement window.

There were so few goings and comings in sleepy little Westbrooke, that the passing of the village omnibus was an exciting event. With an imposing rumble of yellow wheels it rattled up to Doctor Allen's gate across the road. A trunk, a dress suit case, and numerous valises were hoisted to the top of it, and the doctor's family flocked down to the gate to watch the departure of the youngest member of their household, Marguerite.

How He Won the Bicycle / Annie Fellows Johnston

"Looks like everybody in Bardstown has a wheel but us," said Todd Walters, wistfully pressing his little freckled nose against the show-window of the bicycle shop, where a fine wheel was on exhibition.

It was the third time that day that Todd had walked five blocks out of his way to look in at that window, and each time Abbot Morgan and Chicky Wiggins were with him. In the two weeks that the new store had been open, the boys never failed to stop by on their way from school, and the more they looked at the wheel displayed so temptingly in the window, the more each boy longed to own it.

None of them had any spending money. Todd might have by and by when school was out, and he began selling fly-paper again, as he had done the summer before; but it was understood in the tumble-down little cottage that Todd called home that every penny thus earned was to be saved toward the purchase of a much needed new suit.

Big Brother / Annie Fellows Johnston

Every coach on the long western-bound train was crowded with passengers. Dust and smoke poured in at the windows and even the breeze seemed hot as it blew across the prairie cornfields burning in the July sun.

It was a relief when the engine stopped at last in front of a small village depot. There was a rush for the lunch counter and the restaurant door, where a noisy gong announced dinner.

"Blackberries! blackberries!" called a shrill little voice on the platform. A barefoot girl, wearing a sunbonnet, passed under the car windows, holding up a basket full, that shone like great black beads. A gentleman who had just helped two ladies to alight from the steps of a parlor car called to her and began to fumble in his pockets for the right change.

Ann's Own Way / Annie Fellows Johnston

"Ann! Ann! Have you been home yet to feed the chickens?" The call came from the doorway of a big old farmhouse, where a pleasant-faced woman stood looking out over the October fields.

The answer floated down from an apple-tree near by, where a ten-year-old girl sat perched among its gnarled branches. She had a dog-eared book of fairy tales on her knee, and was poring over it in such blissful absorption that she had forgotten there were such things in all the world as chickens to be fed.

"No'm, Aunt Sally, I haven't done it yet, but I'll go in a minute," and she was deep into the story again.