By Ethel Calvert Phillips

Cover illustration by Bojana StojanovicCover design by Tina DeKam

First published in 1934This unabridged version has updated punctuation and spelling.

© 2020 Jenny Phillipsgoodandbeautiful.com

Table of Contents

I. Jeanne-Marie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1II. The Golden Bird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11III. New Shoes for Old . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22IV. At Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34V. A Dreadful Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44VI. The Search for Poli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56VII. The Blue Cart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65VIII. Grandfather’s Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72IX. Grandmother’s Fête . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82X. Autumn Winds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93XI. Sleigh Bells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100XII. The Christmas Present . . . . . . . . . . . .111XIII. Noel! Noel! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119

Chapter I

Jeanne-Marie

She was a little French-Canadian girl, and her name was Jeanne-Marie.

She lived with Papa and Mamma and Aunt Sophie on the top floor of a very old house on a very old street in the old, old city of Québec.

The house had thick walls and deep windowsills. It stood in a row with other gray stone houses on either side. The houses had sharp, pointed roofs. Up in the roofs were little dormer windows with pointed hoods that looked out over the river not far away.

It was very early in the morning, and Jeanne-Marie lay fast asleep in bed. She was tucked under a patchwork quilt as gay as a flower garden. It was made of red and yellow squares, and in the center was a large purple star in a green sky. The little girl under the quilt was a thin, brown little girl with brown eyes and brown hair as straight as a string. But all you could see this

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morning was the tip of her nose and two short pigtails tied at the ends with a bit of black thread.

A broad yellow sunbeam crept into the room and stretched itself across the foot of the small white bed. It moved over the bright quilt slowly, as if it liked the colors and touched the little girl’s hand. Perhaps that is what made Jeanne-Marie stir and open her eyes.

A sound, cheerful and shrill, came floating into the room. It was the voice of a canary, singing and trilling gaily with all his heart.

Jeanne-Marie sat up straight and listened. “It’s Poli,” said Jeanne-Marie.She slipped out of bed and ran to the window. It

was a little dormer window, for Jeanne-Marie, you remember, lived up under the roof where the ceiling sloped too, so that you had to be careful about bumping your head.

“Poli! Poli!” called Jeanne-Marie, smiling happily and waving her hand.

Just over the way stood a small Thread-and-Needle Shop. It was kept by Aunt Sophie’s friend, Madame Pauline. In the shop window, swinging in his cage, hung Madame Pauline’s canary, a little bird with bright golden feathers, whose song Jeanne-Marie now heard.

The canary was named Napoleon, but Jeanne- Marie often called him Poli, for short. Early and late

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he loved to sing in a clear, sweet little voice, with trills and quavers and sudden bursts of song. In the morning when she woke, Jeanne-Marie always listened for the sound of the canary’s cheerful little voice.

“It makes a good beginning for the day,” Aunt Sophie said.

And she was right. There is no doubt about that. So it did.

“Poli! Poli!” called Jeanne-Marie again.Poli’s head was thrown back, and he seemed to be

singing straight up at the window where Jeanne-Marie stood. But before she could be sure that he saw her, the door opened, and Mamma came into the room.

Then, for the first time that morning, Jeanne-Marie remembered what was going to happen. It was then she remembered that today was to be the strangest day she had ever known. For Papa and Mamma were going away, and they meant to stay for a long, long time.

Jeanne-Marie understood very well why this must be. Both Papa and Mamma had told her not once, but many times.

“It is to earn money for the little house that we will buy in the country,” Jeanne-Marie could have told you as quick as a flash.

Jeanne-Marie’s father was to travel up north into the deep Canadian forest to be a woodcutter. He would live with other woodcutters in a rough camp,

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and all day long, he told her, the air would ring with the music of axe and saw.

“There are wolves and bears and deer in the forest,” Papa told her too. “Perhaps I shall bring you home a little black bear.”

That was all very well. Jeanne-Marie thought she would like a friendly little black bear for a playmate. But, better than a present, she liked to think of the time when Papa would be at home with her once more.

“Mamma will not be gone so long as Papa.” Jeanne-Marie took comfort in the thought. “As soon as her sick lady, Madame Roy, is well, Mamma will come home,” said she.

This was true. Jeanne-Marie’s mother was going to a village down the river to be housekeeper for a lady, Madame Roy, who had fallen and broken her leg.

So, with both Papa and Mamma going away, it is plain to be seen what a day lay before Jeanne-Marie.

First of all, she had to sit close beside Papa at breakfast because he was to be gone such a very long while. Then she helped Mamma and Aunt Sophie by running errands to and fro, back and forth, between the rooms, many, many times. She watched Mamma pack her box. She helped her by sitting on the table beside the box and telling where she thought everything should go.

“You and Aunt Sophie will keep house together,”

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said Mamma as she folded her dresses and tucked odds and ends into the corners that Jeanne-Marie pointed out. “You must be a big girl and help her in every way that you can.”

Jeanne-Marie nodded. She loved Aunt Sophie, who was really Great-Aunt Sophie because she was Papa’s aunt too. Jeanne-Marie meant to be good, as Mamma wished. But she felt very sober. She could not smile. It would be so strange without Mamma, gay, pretty Mamma, to keep the house too.

Aunt Sophie was speaking. She was talking to Mamma, but she looked at Jeanne-Marie.

“Perhaps, while you are gone, Jeanne-Marie would like to learn how to sew,” suggested Aunt Sophie in a cheerful voice. “Perhaps she would like to sew patchwork. Then someday she can make her own patchwork quilt.”

Jeanne-Marie’s face grew bright. “I will make a quilt for Mamma,” said she at once.The very thought made her feel better. She would

work hard and have it finished before Mamma came home. Then next winter, when it was bitter cold and the snow lay deep, Jeanne-Marie’s quilt would keep them all warm.

Everyone whom Jeanne-Marie knew made patchwork. Out in the country, Grandmother pieced patchwork quilts. Aunt Sophie and Mamma made

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them in Québec. Of course Jeanne-Marie would like to make a quilt, a patchwork quilt, all her own.

“It will be pretty, the prettiest quilt Mamma has ever seen,” promised Jeanne-Marie.

And where could a better teacher be found than Aunt Sophie? All day long she sat sewing by the window unless she was busy about the house. For Aunt Sophie made baby dresses for a shop in Québec. She embroidered them with fine little flowers and leaves and trailing vines.

Aunt Sophie was speaking again.“You shall begin your patchwork this very afternoon,”

said she. Jeanne-Marie was so pleased at the thought of

making a quilt that she could scarcely wait for Papa to come home to tell him the news. He had gone down the street to say goodbye to Louis, the cobbler. But no sooner was he in the house again than she climbed upon his lap and whispered in his ear.

“I am to make a patchwork quilt for Mamma,” said Jeanne-Marie. “I am to begin it this very afternoon.”

“Good! Good!” said Papa, looking as if he thought that to sew a patchwork quilt was the pleasantest thing anyone could do. “It will be for the best room in our new house in the country, I suppose.”

“Yes, it will,” answered Jeanne-Marie, delighted with the thought. “But it will be for Mamma’s bed too. And

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when it is very cold, I will ask her to cover you with my quilt, for I will make it big and thick and warm.”

“Thank you. Thank you many times,” said Papa, holding Jeanne-Marie close. “We shall have a beautiful house in the country, I think, with your patchwork quilt inside, on the bed, and outside a garden with flowers that you may pick.”

“And a swing for me,” added Jeanne-Marie, who never tired of talking about the little house.

“Yes, a swing that will go almost as high as the treetops,” went on Papa, who liked to talk about the little house too. “And the house will be painted pink because you like that color best.”

“It will be painted pink like the house next to Grand- father’s,” said Jeanne-Marie, who went often to Grandfather’s farm and who knew the country all around.

She remembered the little houses that were painted pink and pale green and sky blue. Some of them were trimmed with bright scarlet or canary yellow. They were all very gay.

“We shall have a pig with a curly tail. He will be pink too,” went on Jeanne-Marie, “and his name will be Charles. That is because Mamma had a pig of her own when she was little, and his name was Charles.”

“The pig shall be called Charles,” said Papa firmly,