THE RAVELLED MITTEN.

BY SOPHIE SWETT.

(In Two Parts.)

I.

It had begun to look as if no one would go to Viola Pitkin's birthday party; it had been snowing for two days, and the drifts in some places were as high as a man's head. Patty Perley had tried to take an interest in the new lace pattern that she was crocheting, and in the paper lamp-shade she was making, for which Ruby Nutting had taught her to make roses that almost smelled sweet, they were so natural, and it was all in vain; and she quite envied Anson, who was trying to draw the buff kitten stuck into the leg of Uncle Reuben's boot. The kitten's squirming and the old cat's frantic remonstrances were preventing the picture from being a success, but Anson was highly entertained, and didn't seem to care whether he went to the party or not. It was just when Patty was feeling irritated by this indifference that Uncle Reuben came in, and she heard him stamping and shaking his clothes in the entry, and saying, "Whew, this is a night!" Then her spirits went down to zero. But the very first thing that Uncle Reuben said when he opened the door was:

"I've told Pelatiah to get out the big sled and hitch up the black mare, and you'll get to your party if the snow is deep. And the sled is large; you'd better pick up all the youngsters you can along the way."

Now that was like Uncle Reuben as he used to be, not as he had been since Dave, his only son, ran away; since then he had not seemed to think there was anything but gloom and sadness in the world. Indeed, Dave's going had taken the heart out of the good times all over Butternut Corner. He was only sixteen, and a good boy—his mother had meant that he should be a minister—but he got into the company of some wild fellows down at Bymport, and of Alf Coombs, a wild fellow nearer home, and then he had run away from home under circumstances almost too dreadful to tell. Burton's jewelry-store at Bymport had been broken into and robbed of watches and jewelry, and the next morning Dave and Alf Coombs had disappeared. They had been seen around the store that night; Dave had not come home until almost morning. The boys had been gone almost two months now, and the suspicion against them had become almost a certainty in most people's minds, and it was reported that the sheriff had a warrant for their arrest, but as yet had not been able to find them.

With such trouble weighing upon them, Patty had felt as if it were almost wicked to wish to go to Viola Pitkin's party, but Aunt Eunice had said, with the quiver about her patient mouth that always came there when she referred to Dave, that the innocent must not suffer for the guilty; and she had told Barbara, the "hired girl," to roast a pair of chickens and make some of her famous cream-cakes also, for it was to be a surprise party, and each guest was to carry a basket of goodies for the supper.

And now Uncle Reuben had planned for them to go, in spite of the snow-drifts; so Patty began to feel that it was not wrong to be light-hearted under the circumstances.

"Take all the youngsters you can pack on," repeated Uncle Reuben, as Patty and Anson settled themselves on the great sled, and Pelatiah cracked his whip over the old horse; "only I wouldn't stop at the foot of the hill"—Uncle Reuben's face darkened suddenly as he said this—"we've had about enough of Coombses."

Patty's heart sank a little, for she liked Tilly Coombs. They were rough and poor people, the Coombs family—"back folks," who had moved to the Corner only the summer before; the father drank, and the mother was an invalid, and it was the son Alf who was supposed to have had an evil influence over Dave. Patty thought it probable that Tilly had been invited to the surprise party, because Ruby Nutting, the doctor's daughter, who had planned the party, would be sure to ask her. Poor people who would be likely to be slighted, and stray animals that no one wanted, those were the ones that Ruby Nutting thought of first.

Along slid the great sled with its jingling bells, and out of her gate at the foot of the hill ran Tilly Coombs—the very first passenger. Patty couldn't help it. She didn't disobey Uncle Reuben's injunction not to stop; Tilly ran and jumped on.

"YOU'LL LET ME GO WITH YOU, WON'T YOU?"

"You'll let me go with you, won't you?" she panted. "I couldn't bear to miss it when she asked me! Some folks wouldn't, but she did. And I never went to a party in all my life! I couldn't bring anything but some doughnuts." Tilly opened her small basket, and by the light of Pelatiah's great lantern Patty saw that eager face darken suddenly. "I made 'em myself, and I'm afraid they're only middling. Doughnuts will soak fat, though, won't they?" she added, anxiously, as Patty gazed doubtfully at the soggy lumps laid carefully in the folds of a ragged napkin. "I never made any before."

It was altogether an affair of first times with Tilly—a happier thing in the way of party-going than of doughnut-making!

"They're very nicely flavored," said Patty, tasting critically, "and where there are so many things nobody will notice if they're not—not so very light."

Tilly's sharp anxious face brightened a little, but she heaved a sigh and covered her doughnuts quickly as the sled stopped to take on Rilly Parkhurst and her cousins, the Stillman boys, and Kathie Loomis, who was visiting Rilly. The Sage boys came next, and Delia Sage, who was sixteen and had taught school, but was just as full of fun as if she were young. It was a merry company; the jingling of the bells was almost drowned in chatter and laughter, and when Ruby Nutting joined it, she was greeted with a cheering that, as Pelatiah said, "must 'a' cracked the mill-pond."

The crowd increased; the baskets were all huddled together upon the seat with Pelatiah, and under the seat, and in the middle of the sled; no one could keep hold of his own, but there was no fear but that they would all know their own when they reached Viola's house.

Ruby Nutting was missed suddenly. She hadn't been as gay as usual; generally Ruby could be depended upon to stir up every one's wits and make the dullest party merry, but to-night she had been sitting in a corner talking in a low tone with Alvan Sage. Now she had disappeared, and Alvan Sage, looking very much surprised and bewildered himself, said that she had slipped off when they were going a little slowly up the hill, just as Pelatiah had held the lantern down to see if there was anything the matter with the horse's foot; she had said she would wait until Horace Barker's sleigh came along; either she thought the sled was too crowded, or she wanted to see some one who was coming with the Barkers. The latter explanation was probable enough, for Chrissy Barker was on the "committee of arrangements," and had helped Ruby about the preparations.

So no one thought much more about it, although it didn't seem like Ruby to go off without saying anything. The sled party was the first to reach Viola's, and it was great fun to see her perfect surprise and delight when they trooped in. They all thought that Ruby Nutting should have been there then.

Patty had a surprise that was not pleasant. When her basket was carried in the cover was open, the cream-cakes all jammed and half spoiled, and the two fine roast chickens were gone!

"See here, you can catch the thief by his mitten!" cried one of the boys. The rim of the basket was broken, probably by the thief in his haste, and to one sharply jagged end was attached a long, long string of red worsted. "Who has a ravelled mitten?"

The color came and went in Tilly Coombs's sharp, elfish little face; then she thrust her hand into her pocket as if she was thrusting her mittens deep into it. Patty Perley happened to be standing close beside her, and saw her.

Patty was mortified to have come to the surprise party with only a few half-spoiled cream-cakes, but she was kind-hearted, and her first thought was a pitying one.

"They must be so very poor! Tilly wanted them for her sick mother," she said to herself.

How Tilly could have taken the chickens from the basket and where she could have concealed them was a mystery. But Uncle Reuben believed that all the Coombs family were thievish and sly; perhaps he was right, and Tilly was used to doing such things. But even Uncle Reuben would not be very hard upon a girl who had stolen delicate food for her sick mother.

"'Sh!—'sh! don't say anything about it! It is of no consequence," she whispered to some girls and boys who were loudly wondering and guessing about the mysterious theft.

Then they all went into the sitting-room, and the Virginia reel, the old-fashioned dance with which Butternut Corner festivities almost always began, was danced, and no one thought any more of the stolen chickens.

Ruby Nutting had come by this time, and she led the dance, as usual the life of the good time. She had come in Horace Barker's sleigh, and she gayly evaded the wonderings and reproaches of the party she had left. As the dance ended, Berta Treadwell beckoned slyly to Patty. Berta was Viola Pitkin's cousin, who had come all the way from California to visit her; she and Patty had "taken to" each other at once.

"I want you to see such a funny thing!" whispered Berta, drawing Patty out into the back entry. "That queer-looking girl they call Tilly, with the wispy black hair and the faded cotton dress, asked me to lend her a pair of knitting-needles! I got grandma's for her, and she snatched them out of my hands, she was so eager. 'You needn't tell anybody that I asked you for 'em, either,' she said, in that sharp way of hers. I had such a curiosity to know what she was going to do with them that I watched her. After a while, when the reel was begun and she thought no one was looking, she slipped out through the wood-shed into the barn. Come and peep through the crack!"

Patty followed Berta softly through the wood-shed, and looked through a chink in the rough board partition into the barn.

On an inverted bucket, with a lantern hung upon a nail over her head, sat Tilly Coombs diligently knitting. The barn was cold; the cattle's breaths made vapors, and there was a glitter of frost around the beams. Tilly was muffled in a shawl, but her face looked pinched and blue.

"What is she knitting? It looks like a red mitten," whispered Berta. "Is she so industrious? To think of leaving a party on a winter night to go out to the barn and knit! Do you think we ought to leave her there in the cold? I should think she must be crazy!"

Patty was drawing Berta back through the wood-shed eagerly, in silence. Berta had not heard about the ravelled mitten; she did not know that Tilly was trying to knit it into shape again so it would never be known that it was her mitten that was ravelled.

"I know why she is doing it," said Patty, "though I don't see why she couldn't have waited until she got home; but I suppose she is awfully anxious. Berta, don't say that we saw her, or anything about the needles, to anybody. That will be kind to her, and she is so poor. Whatever you hear, don't say anything."

"I'm sure I don't want to say anything to hurt her," answered Berta, a little resentfully, for she did think Patty might have told her all about it. "But I must say I think society in Butternut Corner is a little mixed."

"Ruby asked her," explained Patty. "I think it was right; Tilly never went to a party before."

"Her way of enjoying herself at a party is a little queer," said Berta, unsympathetically.

And Patty thought she did not feel quite so sorry as she had done that Berta was going back to California the next day.

She thought she would tell Ruby Nutting; Ruby would understand, and pity Tilly; but before she had a chance, while Horace Barker was singing a college song and Ruby was playing the accompaniment on the piano, a sudden recollection struck her that sent the color from her face. Aunt Eunice's spoons!

Aunt Eunice had said that there were never spoons enough to go round at a surprise party, and Viola Pitkin's mother was her intimate friend, so she wished to help her all she could, and she put a dozen spoons into the basket—the solid silver ones that had been Grandmother Oliver's—and charged Patty to take care of them. And it was not until she overheard Mrs. Pitkin whisper to Viola that she wasn't sure that there were sauce-plates enough that Patty remembered the spoons.

She had a struggle to repress a cry of dismay, those spoons were so precious! Uncle Reuben had demurred when they were put into the basket, but Aunt Eunice was proud, and always liked to give and lend of her best. Patty felt as if she must cry out and denounce Tilly when she crept slyly in behind broad-backed Uncle Nathan Pitkin and slyly warmed her benumbed hands at the fire. But Patty held her peace; when she had reflected for a few minutes she knew that this was too grave a matter for fourteen-year-old wits to grapple with, and she must tell Uncle Reuben and Aunt Eunice.

Tilly Coombs was drawn into a merry game—Ruby Nutting took care of that—and before long her queer little sharp face was actually dimpling with fun, and her laugh rang out with the gayest! Patty Perley looked at her, and decided that it was a very queer world indeed; for her the joy of Viola Pitkin's party was done.

When they were all dressing to depart, Patty looked involuntarily at Tilly Coombs's mittens; in fact, many furtive glances were cast around at the red mittens by those who remembered the theft of the roast chickens. There were many of them, red being the fashionable color for mittens at Butternut Corner, but apparently they were all sound and whole. Tommy Barker had one mitten with a white thumb, which his blind grandmother had knitted on in place of a torn thumb, and little Seba Sage had but one mitten; but that one was very dark red, not the vivid scarlet of the ravelling.

Rilly Parkhurst whispered to Patty, as she sat down beside her on the sled: "Tilly Coombs has the ravelled mitten! She is trying to cover it with her shawl; it is only a little more than half a mitten!"

Patty smothered an exclamation of doubt, and then she gazed curiously at Tilly's hands; but they were tightly, carefully covered by her shawl.

Could it be that after spending all that time in the cold barn she had failed to knit up her ravelled mitten? Tilly looked as if she had been having a good time. Under the light of Pelatiah's lantern her eyes were shining, her face rippling with smiles. Patty thought with wonder that she had not seen her look so happy—well, certainly not since her brother Alf ran away.

"I must have grown plump at the party!" laughed Ruby Nutting. "One of my mittens is too tight around the wrist." And Patty saw Tilly Coombs nervously fold her shawl more closely about her mittens.

Just before her own door was reached, Tilly Coombs leaned towards Patty and whispered, so that even Anson or Pelatiah should not hear.

"I didn't know there were such good times in the world!" she said, with her face aglow. "And Viola Pitkin's uncle Nathan ate one of my doughnuts!" But Patty shrank away from her.