Promise Lodge by Charlotte Hubbard

“And where did you get that quilt?”
    The girls set aside some planks of wood they’d carried upstairs, and Laura chuckled as she approached the bed to look at it. “Those are butterflies! Made from folded hankies— some of them with cool crocheted borders! I can’t see Grandma working on a bright, flowery piece like this one.”
    â€œ Jah, she tried to talk me out of using prints, saying they’d be impractical when I got older,” Rosetta replied as she gazed fondly at the quilt. “I was maybe fifteen when I made this one, from hankies that had belonged to my mamma’s mother and her sisters when they were in their rumspringa . Can you tell I really loved pink back then?”
    Phoebe ran a reverent finger over one of the butterflies. “So you folded the hankies to make their wings, and then embroidered the body and their antennae—”
    â€œAnd stitched them onto pale pink squares before you put them together with this bright pink calico,” Laura finished with a grin. “What a wonderful way to save these hankies—and they’re in prettier prints than the ones you find in the catalogs now.”
    Rosetta smiled, pleased that her nieces shared her love for family pieces that would otherwise have grown yellow with age in the attic. “I thought it was time to use these linens instead of hiding them away in my chest,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t waver. “I won’t be getting married, but I will be welcoming new renters—”
    â€œOh, Aunt Rosetta, you can’t mean that!” Laura blurted.
    â€œYou should never give up hope that the right fellow will come along,” Phoebe insisted as she held Rosetta’s gaze with her blazing blue eyes. “I’ve been praying for that, and I believe it will happen now that we’ve moved away from Coldstream!”
    Part of Rosetta wished she hadn’t gone down this conversational trail, because she recalled feeling the same romantic fervor, the same endless hope, when she’d been her nieces’ age. But it was time to let the girls know that she felt happy and fulfilled with the maidel life God had granted her—time to explain that the single life offered opportunities rather than a reason to feel shame or loneliness.
    â€œTruth be told, the right young man was courting me when I was twenty—your age, Phoebe,” Rosetta replied with a wistful smile. “Tim was helping my dat take down a dead tree. He was climbing up high to saw off some of its branches, and the top section of the tree gave way. When Tim hit the ground, his neck broke—and the accident broke our spirits for a while, too.”
    Laura’s face fell and tears filled Phoebe’s eyes. “I—we had no idea,” she murmured.
    Rosetta smiled sadly. “We didn’t talk about it much. You were a wee little girl when it happened and Laura wasn’t yet born,” she explained. “A few years later, both Mamm and Dat started having health problems, so it was the natural order of things for me to stay home and look after them—not that I wanted to get serious about anybody after Tim passed away. I was sure he’d been the man God intended for me to marry.”
    Rather than get into a theological discussion about why God had allowed her beau to die, Rosetta smoothed the butterfly quilt beneath the two pillows with their embroidered cases. “Mamm and I enjoyed sewing together, so I cherish the pieces we made because we passed many happy hours,” she remarked. “Several of those quilts are still in my trunk, and now I’ve got the perfect place to use them. Come and see my other wild quilt!”
    Rosetta playfully steered the two girls into the next room. She grabbed the edge of the quilt she’d left on the unmade bed and shook it open. “Can you tell your grandma didn’t make this one, either?” she teased.
    Laura laughed