Aunt Jo’s Scrap-Bag Vol. 1

She did not come one morning, but sent her brother, who only laughed,
and said Marie had hurt her foot, when we inquired for her. Anxious to
know if she was really ill, we went to see her in the afternoon, and
heard a pretty little story of practical Christianity.

Marie lay asleep on her mother's bed in the wall, and her father,
sitting by her, told the tale in a low voice, pausing now and then to
look at her, as if his little daughter had done something to be proud
of.

It seems that in the village there was an old woman frightfully
disfigured by fire, and not quite sane as the people thought. She was
harmless, but never showed herself by day, and only came out at night to
work in her garden or take the air. Many of the ignorant peasants feared
her, however; for the country abounds in fairy legends, and strange
tales of ghosts and goblins. But the more charitable left bread at her
door, and took in return the hose she knit or the thread she spun.

During the drought it was observed that her garden, though the
steepest and stoniest, was never dry; her cabbages flourished when her
neighbours' withered, and her onions stood up green and tall as if
some special rain-spirit watched over them. People wondered and shook