Miss Lunette’s pale, thin face flushed with pleasure, and she laid a hand lightly upon Philip’s head.
“I feel so well to-day,” said she graciously, “that I want to show you children some toys that I’ve been making. Some day I mean to sell them in the city, but it won’t do any harm, I suppose, to show them to you beforehand. It is what we call wool-work,” added she carefully.
On a table, drawn close to Miss Lunette’s chair, stood a group of animals made of worsted. There were yellow chickens standing unsteadily upon their toothpick legs. Lopsided white sheep faced a pair of stout rabbits evidently suffering from the mumps. A dull brown rooster suddenly blossomed out into a gorgeous tail of red and green and purple yarn.
For a grown person it would be difficult to imagine who, in the city, would purchase these strange specimens of natural history, but such a disloyal thought did not occur to the children. They admired the toys to Miss Lunette’s complete satisfaction, and they had their reward. For Miss Lunette took from the shelf under the table a book, a home-made book, between whose pasteboard covers had been sewed leaves of stiff white paper.
“As a special treat,” said Miss Lunette sweetly to her round-eyed audience, “I am going to show you my book.”
She paused for an instant to allow Susan and Phil to feast their eyes upon the book in silence.
“This is the cover,” said she at last, “and I made the picture myself.”
The picture was that of a rigid little boy, in a paper soldier cap, stiffly blowing upon a tin trumpet. The picture was carefully colored with red and blue crayons.
“Oh, it’s pretty,” said Susan, in honest admiration. She meant to make a book herself as soon as she reached home.
“What’s inside?” asked Philip. He felt sorry for that little boy, who, as long as he lived with Miss Lunette, might never make a noise.