AUNT MARIA STEPS IN
FOR a long time Wooley Ball and Crow Shay lay very still in the
knitting bag, hoping that Mary Frances would soon come into the room.
At length Crow Shay began to move about restlessly.
“Do be quiet,” whispered Wooley Ball softly. “If you don’t stop jumping
about, you’ll punch a hole in the bag!”
[Illustration: Wooley Ball lay very still.]
“I can’t keep still,” complained Crow Shay; “my foot’s asleep! My, how
it hurts!”
“How does it feel?” asked Wooley Ball, in sympathy.
[Illustration: Hoping Mary Frances would come.]
“Just like tiny mosquito bites all over me which scratching won’t help.”
“I guess you mean moth bites!” exclaimed Wooley Ball.
“Will you two keep still?” said the Yarn Baby, tapping upon the
knitting bag with her soft little fist. “I think that I hear footsteps.”
“Don’t speak to me now,
Don’t speak to me never;
And I will be quiet
Forever and ever!”
sang Crow Shay, poking his little round head up through the top of the
bag.
[Illustration: Poking his head up.]
“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.
[Illustration: Aunt Maria.]
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!”
[Illustration: “But don’t you remember?”]
“But, Aunt Maria, don’t you remember? Mother fell and hurt her arm when
she was little and couldn’t use it for such work for years,” said Mary
Frances. “Even now it hurts her arm to try to crochet. That is what I
commenced to tell you.”
[Illustration: “Even now it hurts her”]
“Oh, yes,” said Aunt Maria, “I remember now. But your arm doesn’t hurt,
and you must learn to crochet and knit, my dear niece. You are so much
like me anyway that you must learn to crochet and knit well. Then you
may grow up to be almost exactly like me! Now, I must go set my bread.
Nothing ever interferes with my program except sickness or death. You
must be like me in that, too.” And the old lady went down the path.
[Illustration: Mary Frances]
At the gate she turned. “Remember,” she called, “I’ll be ready at seven
o’clock.”
[Illustration: “Oh, he loves to crow—”]