They went down the hall to a queer little room that had shelves from the floor to the ceiling and on every shelf was bedding of some sort.  Grandmother took down a quilt from the middle shelf and spread it out on the floor.  “There, Mary Jane,” she said, “look at that!  There’s a piece of your mother’s first short dress and a piece of her mother’s graduating dress—­that pink sprigged scrap; and that’s your Uncle Tom’s shirt waist; and—­well, don’t you see?  There they are; all the ‘scraps’ as you call them cut into pieces and made into a quilt.  I’ve always promised that your mother should have this some day.  I think I’ll have to send it to her now if she’s raising a girl who don’t know what a quilt is!”

Mary Jane got down on her hands and knees and looked at each piece.  “Oh, I know now!” she suddenly exclaimed, “I remember!  Mother made one for her doll bed when she was a little girl and it had a piece like this with a red horse shoe in it.”

“To be sure,” said Grandmother much pleased.  “Did she show it to you?”

“Yes, only I disremembered for a while,” said Mary Jane solemnly.  “She showed it to me the day we sewed.  She made it when she was a little girl about as old as me, maybe, because they didn’t have nice sewing cards then.”

“Yes, she made it when she was visiting me, one summer, just as you are here now,” said Grandmother thoughtfully.

“Oh, Grandmother,” cried Mary Jane suddenly, and she was so excited she sat up straight and tall, “I’ll tell you what let’s do to-day!”

“Well,” said Grandmother, kindly.

“Let’s me make a quilt.”

“Fine!” said Grandmother, “only you know you can’t make it all in one day—­it takes a long time to make a quilt, a good quilt.”

“Let’s begin it then,” said Mary Jane, “and let’s make it all pretty like this.”

“I’ll put this away,” replied Grandmother, “and then I’ll get my piece bag and see what I have that goes well with what your mother sent.  Then we’ll make a pattern and cut our pieces—­you see, there’s a lot to quilt-making before the sewing begins.”

[Illustration:  “We’ll make a pattern and cut out our pieces—­there’s a lot to quilt-making.”]

“Goody!” cried Mary Jane happily, “I know I’m going to like it all!”

And she did.

She liked the hunting out pretty pieces and cutting them out (yes, she did some of that herself, cutting carefully by the little pattern Grandmother made for her) and counting them and pinning them together:  four blues with five pink, or four figured with five plain; everything was four and five.

Then, when material was ready for seven blocks, Grandmother said they had done enough cutting for one day.  So they gathered up the pinned together blocks and went downstairs to the cozy sitting-room and sewed the rest of the morning.  And while they sewed Grandmother told stories about when Mary Jane’s mother was a little girl and came to visit.