of her arithmetic book and she didn't know it lived anywhere else.

After the salt was worked in she watched Aunt Abigail's deft, wrinkled
old hands make pats and rolls. It looked like the greatest fun, and too
easy for anything; and when Aunt Abigail asked her if she wouldn't like
to make up the last half-pound into a pat for dinner, she took up the
wooden paddle confidently. And then she got one of the surprises that
Putney Farm seemed to have for her. She discovered that her hands didn't
seem to belong to her at all, that her fingers were all thumbs, that she
didn't seem to know in the least beforehand how hard a stroke she was
going to give nor which way her fingers were going to go. It was, as a
matter of fact, the first time Elizabeth Ann had tried to do anything
with her hands except to write and figure and play on the piano, and
naturally she wasn't very well acquainted with them. She stopped in
dismay, looking at the shapeless, battered heap of butter before her and
holding out her hands as though they were not part of her.

Aunt Abigail laughed, took up the paddle, and after three or four passes
the butter was a smooth, yellow ball. "Well, that brings it all back to
me!" she said? "when _I_ was a little girl, when my grandmother first
let me try to make a pat. I was about five years old--my! what a mess I
made of it! And I remember? doesn't it seem funny--that SHE laughed and
said her Great-aunt Elmira had taught her how to handle butter right
here in this very milk-room. Let's see, Grandmother was born the year
the Declaration of Independence was signed. That's quite a while ago,
isn't it? But butter hasn't changed much, I guess, nor little girls
either."

Elizabeth Ann listened to this statement with a very queer, startled
expression on her face, as though she hadn't understood the words. Now