She never knew how her great idea came to her.  Sometimes she thought she must have dreamed it, sometimes she even wondered reverently, in the phraseology of the weekly prayer-meeting, if it had not been “sent” to her.  She never admitted to herself that she could have thought of it without other help; it was too great, too ambitious, too lofty a project for her humble mind to have conceived.  Even when she finished drawing the design with her own fingers, she gazed at it incredulously, not daring to believe that it could indeed be her handiwork.  At first it seemed to her only like a lovely but quite unreal dream.  She did not think of putting it into execution—­so elaborate, so complicated, so beautifully difficult a pattern could be only for the angels in heaven to quilt.  But so curiously does familiarity accustom us even to very wonderful things, that as she lived with this astonishing creation of her mind, the longing grew stronger and stronger to give it material life with her nimble old fingers.

She gasped at her daring when this idea first swept over her and put it away as one does a sinfully selfish notion, but she kept coming back to it again and again.  Finally she said compromisingly to herself that she would make one “square,” just one part of her design, to see how it would look.  Accustomed to the most complete dependence on her brother and his wife, she dared not do even this without asking Sophia’s permission.  With a heart full of hope and fear thumping furiously against her old ribs, she approached the mistress of the house on churning-day, knowing with the innocent guile of a child that the country woman was apt to be in a good temper while working over the fragrant butter in the cool cellar.

Sophia listened absently to her sister-in-law’s halting, hesitating petition.  “Why, yes, Mehetabel,” she said, leaning far down into the huge churn for the last golden morsels—­“why, yes, start another quilt if you want to.  I’ve got a lot of pieces from the spring sewing that will work in real good.”  Mehetabel tried honestly to make her see that this would be no common quilt, but her limited vocabulary and her emotion stood between her and expression.  At last Sophia said, with a kindly impatience:  “Oh, there!  Don’t bother me.  I never could keep track of your quiltin’ patterns, anyhow.  I don’t care what pattern you go by.”

With this overwhelmingly, although unconsciously, generous permission Mehetabel rushed back up the steep attic stairs to her room, and in a joyful agitation began preparations for the work of her life.  It was even better than she hoped.  By some heaven-sent inspiration she had invented a pattern beyond which no patchwork quilt could go.