Lucy followed Miss Anne’s advice in making the amusement of sitting at her own breakfast table last as long as possible. She toasted her little slices of bread with the toasting-fork, and poured out the tea from her tea-pot. She found that it had a slight tinge of the color of tea, which Miss Anne had given it by sweetening it a little, with brown sugar. Lucy enjoyed her breakfast very much.
While she was eating it, Joanna, who was much pleased with her for being so still, and so careful not to make her any trouble, asked her if she should not like a roasted apple.
“Yes,” said Lucy, “very much indeed.”
“I will give you one,” said Joanna, “and show you how to roast it, if you will go and ask your mother, if she thinks it will not hurt you.”
Lucy accordingly went and asked her mother. She said it would not hurt her at all, and that she should be very glad to have Joanna get her an apple.
Joanna accordingly brought a large, rosy apple, with a stout stem. She tied a long string to the stem, and then held the apple up before the fire a minute, by means of the stem. Then she got a flat-iron, and tied the other end of the string to the flat-iron. The flat-iron she then placed upon the mantle shelf, and the string was just long enough to let the apple hang down exactly before the fire.
When it was all arranged in this way, she took up the apple, and twisted the string for some time; and then, when she let the apple down again gently to its place, the weight of it began to untwist the string, and this made the apple itself turn round quite swiftly before the fire.
Joanna also put a plate under the apple, to catch any of the juice or pulp which might fall down, and then left Lucy to watch it while it was roasting.
Lucy watched its revolutions for some time in silence. She observed that the apple would whirl very swiftly for a time, and then it would go slower, and slower, and slower, until, at length, she said,
“Joanna, Joanna, it is going to stop.”