“I’ll show you; it’s easy,” replied the boy, picking up a big wooden ball and balancing it on one hand. “Come on out and try,” he urged, and Anne stepped out into the yard. “Watch me!” said Frederick.
He stepped back a little, sent a keen glance toward the wooden “bottles,” as if measuring the distance, then holding the ball in one hand and leaning a little sideways, swung it back and forth for a few times and then sent it rolling across the grass. It struck one of the “bottles,” and that in falling sent over two more.
“Oh, I can do that!” exclaimed Anne.
“All right, try. I’ll set up the pins for you,” said Frederick.
Anne thought to herself that it was funny to call those wooden objects “pins.”
“You’d better take a smaller ball,” said Frederick, selecting one from a number lying near the door; and he handed her a ball that Anne thought was about the size of a pint dipper.
Frederick told her how to hold it, how to stand, and how to get the right motion to send it in a straight line.
“It’s all in your eye, looking straight, and getting the right swing,” he said.
Anne’s first ball did not go half the proper distance, but she kept on trying, and before dinner time could send a ball nearly as well as Frederick himself.
“It’s fun,” she declared. Her face was flushed with the exercise, and her eyes shining with pleasure. For the moment she had forgotten all about the wooden doll. She and Frederick stopped in the sink-room to wash their hands before going in to dinner.