There was not a child in the city but had a great horror of this school, though it may seem rather strange that they should; for the punishment, at first thought, did not seem so very terrible.  Ever since it was established, the school had been in charge of a very singular little old woman.  Nobody had ever known where she came from.  The benevolent lady who founded the institution, had brought her to the door one morning in her coach, and the neighbors had seen the little brown, wizened creature, with a most extraordinary gown on, alight and enter.  This was all any one had ever known about her.  In fact, the benevolent lady had come upon her in the course of her travels in a little German town, sitting in a garret window, behind a little box-garden of violets, sewing patchwork.  After that, she became acquainted with her, and finally hired her to superintend her school.  You see, the benevolent lady had a very tender heart, and though she wanted to reform the naughty children of her native city, and have them grow up to be good men and women, she did not want them to be shaken, nor have their ears cuffed; so the ideas advanced by the strange little old woman just suited her.

“Set ’em to sewing patchwork,” said this little old woman, sewing patchwork vigorously herself as she spoke.  She was dressed in a gown of bright-colored patchwork, with a patchwork shawl over her shoulders.  Her cap was made of tiny squares of patchwork, too.  “If they are sewing patchwork,” went on the little old woman, “they can’t be in mischief.  Just make ’em sit in little chairs and sew patchwork, boys and girls alike.  Make ’em sit and sew patchwork, when the bees are flying over the clover, out in the bright sunlight, and the great bluewinged butterflies stop with the roses just outside the windows, and the robins are singing in the cherry-trees, and they’ll turn over a new leaf, you’ll see!” sewing away with a will.

[Illustration:  THE PATCHWORK WOMAN.]

So the school was founded, the strange little old woman placed over it, and it really worked admirably.  It was the pride of the city.  Strangers who visited it were always taken to visit the Patchwork School, for that was the name it went by.  There sat the children, in their little chairs, sewing patchwork.  They were dressed in little patchwork uniforms; the girls wore blue and white patchwork frocks and pink and white patchwork pinafores, and the boys blue and white patchwork trousers, with pinafores like the girls.  Their cheeks were round and rosy, for they had plenty to eat—­bread and milk three times a day—­but they looked sad, and tears were standing in the corners of a good many eyes.  How could they help it?  It did seem as if the loveliest roses in the whole country were blossoming in the garden of the Patchwork School, and there were swarms of humming-birds flying over them, and great red and blue-winged butterflies.  And there were tall cherry-trees a little way from the window, and they used to be perfectly crimson with fruit; and the way the robins would sing in them!  Later in the season there were apple and peach-trees, too, the apples and great rosy peaches fairly dragging the branches to the ground, and all in sight from the window of the schoolroom.