Ella Farman Pratt.
THE HOUSE OF THE GRANDMOTHERS.
CHAPTER VII.—How the Parrot Helped.
But there was something more to be done than just to say, “Come, Baby! come to mama,” to get Mary Ellen to creep again.
“COME GET THE BOO’FUL BIRD!”
Mary Ellen’s papa, mama, and maternal grandmama all got down on the floor at the opposite end of the room, and smiled and held out hands and coaxed and chirruped; and Mary Ellen smiled in return and crowed and jounced her little self up and down, and seemed ever so many times to be on the very point of starting to go, but after all did not once make any effort to get over on her little hands and knees and creep. It ended every time in her sitting there and reaching for them to come over and get her.
“She’ll never do it again,” said Mama Nan.
“Perhaps she hasn’t at all,” said Papa Dick. “She may just have rolled there. Do you know that she crept?”
“Oh! she crept,” said Mrs. Camp. “I examined her hands and knees.”
Now there was one thing Mary Ellen had always wanted more than anything else and many times had reached up her little hands for—the red and green parrot on the bronze perch. But though the bird had an equal curiosity about the baby, Mama Nan would never let Dom Pedro be brought near her child for fear that cruel hooked bill might bite!