sang Crow Shay, poking his little round head up through the top of the bag.
“Oh, are you going to be bad?” sighed the Yarn Baby. “Get down in there!” She pushed his head down into the bag and tied it shut.
“Now, he’s shut up,” she said, settling down beside the bag, and smoothing her hair, which had begun to stand up.
She was just in time, too, for as she finished putting the last strand in place the door opened, and in stepped—Mary Frances’ Aunt Maria!
[Illustration: “Will you two keep still?”]
“For the land’s sake!” she exclaimed. “For the land’s sake! So that is where Mary Frances left her knitting bag! I’ve hunted high and low for it. I never thought to look on the floor!”
She sat down on Mary Frances’ little rocking-chair and emptied Wooley Ball and Crow Shay on her lap.
“Very well,” she said, “these things will do to start with. I shall begin her lessons to-night.”
[Illustration: Wooley Ball and Crow Shay.]
Just as she put them back into the bag, she spied the Yarn Baby.
“I’ll put that silly doll in, too,” she said, tumbling the Yarn Baby into the bag and pulling the drawing-strings tight.
Then she carried the bag downstairs and out on the porch, where Mary Frances sat in the porch swing reading a book.
“It is high time, my dear,” she said, “that you learn to crochet and knit. To-night I shall give you your first lesson.
“Oh, won’t that be splendid, Aunt Maria?” cried the little girl. “I do want to learn so much!”
[Illustration: “Won’t that be splendid?”]
“It seems very strange to me that you do not know anything about such work,” said her aunt. “Why, I made your father learn how to knit when he was only six years old!”
Mary Frances did not tell her Aunt Maria that her father had told her about those lessons, and how he had hated the work because, every time he made a mistake, his aunt would whack his chubby, clumsy little fingers with a ruler.
You see, Aunt Maria was Mary Frances’ great-aunt, and was the aunt of her father also. Mary Frances’ grandmother, the mother of Mary Frances’ father, died when he was a little boy and his Aunt Maria had “brought him up.”
“Mother would like to teach me,” said Mary Frances, “but——”
“Your mother was not brought up right,” her aunt snapped. “What does she know about crocheting? She doesn’t know star stitch from coffee-bean stitch, and as for knitting—I don’t suppose she knows plain knitting from purling! Very queer! A very queer way to bring up a child!”