“Young Woman!” Dom Pedro called. Mary Ellen crept on, the cats frolicking along with her. Dom Pedro’s perch stood where he had a good view of the stairs, and now, as Mary Ellen laid her little hand on the bottom step he burst into a perfect frenzy of hoarse calls and squeaks.
Ella Farman Pratt.
THE NIMBLE PENNIES.
Draw a small circle, and then a large circle below and behind it, and a little to one side—as in the first two designs. (Draw the circles around a small cent and a large copper cent, or two-cent piece, or silver quarter.) Add the lines in the other four designs, and you will have a pretty Poll Parrot on its perch.
THE HOUSE OF THE GRANDMOTHERS.
CHAPTER IX.—A Bumped Nose.
SHE CAME TO A DOOR.
Mary Ellen paid no attention to Dom Pedro’s cries. She pressed one fat hand down hard on the first stair and steadied herself and straightened herself up until her little knees were level with the step, and then on it—and there she was, up a stair! Her little face was very red, and she was very puffy all over. But she seemed to have an instinct as to what to do next. Or perhaps she had studied it all out on her rug. Learned men are trying to pry into the minds of babies now, but as yet none has discovered very much as to what a baby thinks of, or whether it thinks anything. She grasped hold of a baluster-round with one hand and laid a sturdy little knee on the next stair, and in this way up she went, panting and puffing and getting on up, she and the kittens, but never making a loud sound, excepting a little grunt now and again.
But the moment she reached the top she broke out into a delighted gurgle of little words: “Gum-um! gum-um!” Then she got herself on her feet—a very dusty, mussed-up, red-faced, white-frocked baby, her sunshiny hair wet on her heated forehead, but her blue eyes sparkling. She steadied herself in her little red kid slippers and then, her hands against the wall, she stepped along, step by step, until she came to a door. On that she spatted with her two little hands and said, “Gum-um! gum-um!”