Patchwork Part 18

"Well, don't Miss Lee live in Philadelphia? Perhaps she could help you to get a good teacher and find a place to board."

"Mother Bab!" Phbe sprang to her feet and wrapped her arms about the slender little woman. "That's just it!" she cried. "I never thought of that! David said you'd help me. I'll write to Miss Lee to-day!"

"Phbe," the woman said, smiling at the girl's wild enthusiasm.

"I'm not crazy, just inspired," said Phbe. "You helped me, I knew you would! I want to go to Philadelphia to study music but I know daddy and Aunt Maria would never listen to any proposals about going to a big city and living among strangers. But if I write to Miss Lee and she says she'll help me the folks at home may consider the plan. I'll have a hard time, though"--a reactionary doubt touched her--"I'll have a dreadful time persuading Aunt Maria that I'm safe and sane if I mention music and Philadelphia and Phbe in the same breath." Then she smiled determinedly. "At least I'm going to make a brave effort to get what I want. I'm not going to settle down on the farm and get brown and fat and wear gingham dresses all my life, and sunbonnets in the bargain! I never could see why I had to wear sunbonnets, I always hated them. Aunt Maria always tried to make me wear them, but as soon as I was out of her sight I sneaked them off. I remember one time I threw my bonnet in the Chicques and I had the loveliest time watching it disappear down the stream. But Aunt Maria made me make another one that was uglier still, so I gained nothing but the temporary pleasure of seeing it float away.

And how I hated to do patchwork! It seemed to me I was always doing it, and I never could see the sense of cutting up pieces and then sewing them together again."

"But the sewing was good practice for you, Phbe. Patchwork--seems to me all our life is patchwork: a little here and a little there; one color now, then another; one shape first, then another shape fitted in; and when it is all joined it will be beautiful if we keep the parts straight and the colors and shapes right. It can be a very beautiful rising sun or an equally pretty flower basket, or it can be just a crazy quilt with little of the beautiful about it."

"Mother Bab, if I had known that while I was patching I would have loved to patch! I had nothing to make it interesting; it was just st.i.tching, st.i.tching, st.i.tching on seams! But those vivid quilts are all finished and I guess Aunt Maria is as glad about it as I am, for I gave her some worried hours before the end was sighted. Poor Aunt Maria, she should be glad to have me go to the city. I've led her some merry chases, but I must admit she was always equal to them, forged ahead of me many times."

"Phbe, you're a wilful child and I'm afraid I spoil you more."

"No you don't! You're my safety valve. If I couldn't come up here and say the things I really feel I'd have to tell it to the Jenny Wrens--Aunt Maria hates to have me talk to myself."

"But she's good to you, Phbe?"

"Yes, oh, yes! I appreciate all she has done for me. She has taken care of me since I was a tiny baby. I'll never forget that. It's just that we are so different. I can't make Phbe Metz be just like Maria Metz, can I?"

"No, you must be yourself, even if you are different."

"That's it, Mother Bab. I feel I have the right to live my life as I choose, that no person shall say to me I must live it so or so. If I want to study music why shouldn't I do so? My mother left a few hundred dollars for me; it's been on interest and amounts to more than a few hundred, about a thousand dollars, I think. So the money end of my studying music need not worry Aunt Maria. I am determined to do it, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose I'd feel the same way."

"How did you learn to understand so well, Mother Bab? You have lived all your life on a farm, yet you are not narrow."

"I hope I have not grown narrow," the woman said softly. "I have read a great deal. I have read--don't you breathe it to a soul--I have often read when I should have been baking pies or was.h.i.+ng windows!"

"No wonder David wors.h.i.+ps you so."

"I still enjoy reading," said Mother Bab. "David subscribes for three good magazines and when they come I'm so anxious to look into them that sometimes my cooking burns."

"That must be one of the reasons your English is correct. I am ashamed of myself when I mix my v's and w's and use a _t_ for a _d_. I have often wished the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect would have been put aside long ago."

"Yes," the woman agreed, "I can't see the need of it. It has been ridiculed so long that it should have died a natural death. It's a mystery to me how it has survived. But cheer up, Phbe, the gibberish is dying out. The older people will continue to speak it but the younger generations are becoming more and more English speaking. Why, do you know, Phbe, since this war started in Europe and I read the dreadful crimes the Germans are committing I feel that I never want to hear or say, 'Yah.'"

"Bully!" Phbe clapped her hands. "I said to old Aaron Hogendobler yesterday that I'm ashamed I have a German name and some German ancestors, even if they did come to this country before the Revolution, and he said no one need feel shame at that, but every American who is not one hundred per cent American should die from shame. I know we Pennsylvania Dutch can carry our end of the burdens of the world and be real Americans, but I want to sound like one too."

Mother Bab laughed. "Just yesterday I said to David that the b.u.t.ter was _all_."

"I say that very often. I must read more."

"And I less. I haven't told you, Phbe, nor David, but my eyes are going back on me. I went to Lancaster a few weeks ago and the doctor there said I must be very careful not to strain them at all. I think I'd rather lose any other sense than sight. I always thought it was the greatest affliction in the world to be blind."

"It is! It mustn't come to you, Mother Bab!"

The woman looked worried, but in a moment her face brightened.

"Anyhow," she said, "what's the use of worrying or thinking about it? If it ever comes I'll have to bear it just as many other people are bearing it. I'm glad I have sight to-day to see you."

Phbe gave her an ecstatic hug. "I believe you're Irish instead of Pennsylvania Dutch! You do know how to blarney and you have that coaxing, lovely way about you that the Irish are supposed to have."

"Why, Phbe, I am part Iris.h.!.+ My mother's maiden name was McKnight.

David and I still have a few drops of the Irish blood in us, I suppose."

"I just knew it! I'm glad. I adore the whimsical way the Irish have, and I like their sense of humor. I guess that's one of the reasons I like you better than other people I know and perhaps that's why David is jolly and different from Phares. Ah," she added roguishly, "I think it's a pity Phares hasn't some Irish blood in him. He's so solemn he seldom sees a joke."

"But he's a good boy and he thinks a lot of you. He's just a little too quiet. But he's a good preacher and very bright."

"Yes, he's so good that I'm ashamed of myself when I say mean things about him. I like him, but people with more life are more interesting."

"h.e.l.lo, who's this you like?" David's hearty voice burst upon them.

Phbe turned and saw him standing in the sunlight of the open door. The thought flashed upon her, "How big and strong he is!"

He wore brown corduroys, a blue chambray s.h.i.+rt slightly open at the throat, heavy shoes. His face was already tanned by the wind and sun, his hands rough from contact with soil and farming implements, his dark hair rumpled where he had pulled the big straw hat from his head, but there was an odor of fresh spring earth about him, a boyish wholesomeness in his face, that attracted the girl as she looked at his frame in the doorway.

There was a flash of white teeth, a twinkle in his dark eyes, as he asked, "What did I hear you say, Phbe--that you like _me_?"

"Indeed not! I wouldn't think of liking anybody who deceived me as you have done. All these years you have left me under the impression that you are Pennsylvania Dutch and now Mother Bab says you are part Irish."

"Little saucebox! What about yourself? You can't make me believe that you are pure, unadulterated Pennsylvania Dutch. There's some alien blood in you, by the ways of you. Have you seen Phares this afternoon?" he asked irrelevantly.

"Phares? No. Why?"

"He went down past the field some time ago. Said he's going to Greenwald and means to stop and ask you to go to a sale with him next week. He said you mentioned some time ago that you'd like to go to a real old-fas.h.i.+oned one and he heard of one coming off next week and thought you might like to go."

"I surely want to go. Don't you want to come, too, David? And Mother Bab?"

But David shook his head. "And spoil Phares's party," he said. "Phares wouldn't thank us."

Phbe shrugged her shoulders. "Ach, David Eby, you're silly! Just as though I want to go to a sale all alone with Phares! He can take the big carriage and take us all."

"He can but he won't want to." David showed an irritating wisdom. "When I invite you to come on a party with me I won't want Phares tagging after, either. Two's company."

"Two's boredom sometimes," she said so ambiguously that the man laughed heartily and Mother Bab smiled in amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Come now, Phbe," David said, "just because you put your hair up you mustn't think you can rule us all and don grown-up airs."

"Then you do notice things! I thought you were blind. You are downright mean, David Eby! When you wore your first pair of long pants I noticed it right away and made a fuss about them and it takes you ten minutes to see that my hair is up instead of hanging in a silly braid down my back."

"I saw it first thing, Phbe. That was mean--I'm sorry----"

"You look it," she said sceptically.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, "to see the braid go, though you look fine this way. I liked that long braid ever since the day I braided it, the day you played prima donna. Remember?"