Little Miss Mouse

Excerpt: Aunt Hester, do you like to make buttonholes? Ruth asked with interest in her tones. No, was the answer, I hate to make them. Aunt Hester bit off her thread fiercely. I hate them, she repeated, reaching for her spool which had fallen under the chair. Ruth made a scramble for it, picked it up and laid it in Aunt Hester's lap. If you don't like to make them, what's the reason you do it? she went on. I thought grown-up people could do just what they liked. Aunt Hester gave a little scornful laugh. That's where you are mistaken. When I was a little girl like you I thought so, too, and when my mother made me sit by her and sew as I make you, I used to think that when I grew up I'd never touch a needle. Oh, and now you have to do it nearly all day. There was sympathy in Ruth's tones. Never you mind what I do all day. You chatter too much. Go on with your work. And Ruth returned to the slow and tedious task of picking out the threads from a coat. The threads stood up in a long row down the seam. Ruth called them Indians on account of the fancied resemblance to the feathered decorations on the heads of the savages in a picture in her geography. She and Aunt Hester were sitting in the latter's bedroom where the two always spent an hour together on Saturday afternoons. Ruth always resented being kept indoors on this holiday, but Aunt Hester was obdurate. To be sure Billy had to stack wood or chop kindling or do some such task at the same hour so he wouldn't be on hand to play with, anyhow. Lucia Field had to help her mother; Annie Waite's mother kept her busy, and it seemed as if there was a combined intention on the part of the older people to give this unhappy hour to children. It was probable that they had decided to do it at some mothers' meeting, Ruth concluded, and she always felt a sudden rebellious pang whenever Aunt Hester prepared to go forth to one of these gatherings, for just after, there was sure to be a period of extra strictness, and certain little tasks that perhaps had been gradually slighted during the month were enforced more rigidly. Ruth looked up at the clock. It still wanted fifteen minutes to three and there were many Indians still poking up their heads along the line of brown cloth. She ventured another remark. It was out of reason to sit silent more than ten minutes at a time.