"Now I'll get the basket of stockings and rock while the cake is baking," said the fat old lady. "I'm not going to have my cake burned on the edges. If there's one thing worse than another, it's a burned cake, I think!"
The old brown rocker, which Grandma had named "Racky," creaked and groaned as the fat lady sat down in it with her basket of mending.
"Dear me!" murmured Mrs. Harden with a sighing sort of laugh, "you are getting old like myself, Racky! You won't last much longer!"
"I won't if you sit down on me as hard as that every time!" said Racky.
Now don't be surprised. The rocking chair did not speak out loud, though, when it was needful, it could talk. But this time the chair was speaking to itself.
"No, indeed, I won't last much longer if you drop into me that way!" whispered the chair. "You're getting fatter than ever, old lady!"
This was true enough, but Grandma Marden didn't mind that. She would have been surprised, though, to hear the chair speak, for she did not know her old rocker had anything wonderful, or magical, about it, as, indeed, it had.
To and fro rocked Grandma, humming a little song to herself as she plied her needle in and out, mending holes that Nat and Weezie had worn in their stockings. Many holes there were, for the children ran about like little wild Indians as soon as they came from school.
Every now and then Grandma would get up out of the rocker and look in the oven of the gas stove, to make sure the cake was not burning. And each time she sat down again, the chair creaked and groaned and squeaked, and seemed to shake as if it would fall apart.
"I say there! Easy, Grandma!" exclaimed the chair as the fat old lady sat down particularly hard after about her third look in the oven. "Be a bit careful, if you please! You'll break one of my legs, or a rocker, if you sit down so heavily! Then I'll be put away up in the attic with the other old furniture, and that will be the end of me! Don't sit on me so hard!"