“It’s good fortune to get them back,” said Mrs. Stoddard. “Now you will have milk for your white kitten, Anne. Since the English sailors rescued you from the Indians, they’ve not been about so much.”
The kitten was almost forgotten in petting and feeding Brownie, and Amanda looked on wonderingly to see Anne bring in bunches of tender grass for the little brown cow to eat.
“I cannot get near to our cow,” she said; “she shakes her horns at me, and sniffs, and I dare not feed her,” but she resolved to herself that she would try and make friends with the black and white animal of which she had always been afraid.
“Come again, Amanda,” said Anne, when Amanda said that she must go home, and the little visitor started off happily toward home, resolving that she would bring over her white kitten the very next day, and wondering if her own father could not make her a doll such as Anne Nelson had.
“Thee must not forget thy knitting, Anne,” cautioned Mrs. Stoddard, as Anne came in from a visit to Brownie, holding the white kitten in her arms; “’twill not be so many weeks now before the frost will be upon us, and I must see to it that your uncle’s stockings are ready, and that you have mittens; so you must do your best to help on the stockings,” and Mrs. Stoddard handed the girl the big ball of scarlet yarn and the stocking just begun on the shining steel needles.
“Remember, it is knit one and seam,” she said. “You can sit in the open doorway, child, and when you have knit round eight times we will call thy stint finished for the morning. This afternoon we must go for cranberries. We will be needing all we can gather before the frost comes.”
Anne put the kitten down on the floor and took the stocking, eyeing the scarlet yarn admiringly. She sat down in the open doorway and began her stint, her mind filled with happy thoughts. To have Amanda speak well of her dear father, to know that Brownie was safe in the barn, to possess a white kitten of her own, and, above all, to be knitting herself a pair of scarlet stockings made Anne feel that the world was a very kind and friendly place. The white kitten looked at the moving ball of yarn curiously, and now and then made little springs toward it, greatly to Anne’s amusement, but in a few moments she found that her progress was slow, and the white kitten was sent off the broad step to play by itself on the sandy path.
From time to time Mrs. Stoddard would come to look at Anne’s knitting, and to praise the smoothness of the work.
“Your uncle says you are to have stout leather shoes,” she said. “Elder Haven tells me that there will be six weeks’ school this autumn and it be good news.”
“Shall I go to school, Aunt Martha?” questioned Anne, looking up from her knitting.