But Grandma only laughed as she heard the chair creaking and groaning in its joints, and she said, again:
"You're getting old like myself, Racky!"
Back and forth she rocked, and then she laughed and exclaimed:
"Well, I declare! You're a regular traveler, Racky! Here you are away over by the sink, though when I first sat in you it was near the cellar door. You're a regular traveler!"
And so the rocking chair was. I dare say you have heard of traveling rockers. If you sit in them on one side of the room, and sway to and fro, in a little while you will find yourself on the other side of the room.
Racky, the rocker, was this kind of a chair, though he had never given it much thought. But now, all of a sudden, a daring plan came into his mind. For, in a way, Racky could think, and act and talk.
Grandma picked up the traveling rocker and set it down again near the cellar door. She swung herself backward and forward, finishing the song she was humming, and also mending the last stocking.
Then she wanted to get up, but she had leaned so far back in the chair that she had to try twice before she could rise. And, after the first falling back, the rocker creaked and strained so under her weight that the old lady exclaimed:
"Oh, are you going to break a leg?"
"I certainly hope not!" thought Racky, though, for a moment, he feared something like this had happened. But it was only his old joints creaking.