The following day was Friday, and it was part of Emily’s duties on this day to arrange her bureau-drawers and put her closet in order.  She went up stairs after dinner with this intention, but there were so many little gifts and keep-sakes in her drawers, to be successively admired and thought over, so many sashes to unfold, and odd gloves to be paired, that the whole afternoon was consumed, and the tea-bell rang before she had quite finished the second drawer, and consequently the duty of that day remained to be finished on the next.

“Well, my little girl,” said her father the next morning, “I hope you will have my handkerchief nicely hemmed by this afternoon; you have had it several days now, and I suppose it is nearly finished.  I shall want it, as I am going away after dinner.”

“You shall have it, papa,” replied Emily.  She did not like to tell him the handkerchief was not yet commenced, as she felt quite sure she could finish it in time, and determined to begin immediately after breakfast.

When she went up stairs to get the handkerchief out of her drawer she saw her bureau was yet in disorder.  “Mamma will be displeased to see this,” she thought, “and I shall have time enough to put it in order and hem papa’s handkerchief beside.”  She went eagerly to work, but the bureau took her longer than she anticipated, and when her father came home to dinner she had not finished his handkerchief.

Now she made her needle fly, but her industry came too late; her father could not wait, and Emily had the mortification of hearing him say: 

“I hope my handkerchief will not be like my gloves, that you kept so long to mend, and mamma had to finish after all.”

She cried bitterly after he was gone, but managed through her tears to finish the handkerchief at last, and carried it to her mother, asking her to beg her papa’s forgiveness.

After tea was over, Mrs. Manvers called Emily to her, and folding her arm fondly around the little girl’s waist, pointed to a small book lying open upon the table, saying as she did so: 

“Do you remember, my love, our conversation last Saturday night upon the subject of your gifts?”

“Oh, yes, mamma, and you told me you would keep an account of my ill-usage of one of them.”

“I have done so, my dear, and now tell me can you not imagine what this gift is which you so much abuse?”

“Indeed, I cannot, mamma,” replied the little girl with a sigh.  Mrs. Manvers placed the memorandum book in her daughter’s hand without saying a word.

There, written at the head of the page, were these words: 

  “Emily’s Waste of Time.”

and beneath was quite a long column of figures, and a list of duties unfulfilled.

“Oh, mamma,” cried Emily, throwing herself upon her mother’s breast, “it is time, precious time, that is the gift I waste; but surely I have not spent so many idle minutes in just one week.”