"When my lamb is big enough" said Mary to little Aunt Hannah, "my father will shear him with the clippers, like the old sheep and Mother will teach me to spin, and knit the wool; and so my little lamb will give me my gloves and socks." "Let's shear him now." said Aunt Hannah. "I can teach you to knit." "Well." said Mary. "He is very little—but we will only take a little of his wool." So she got the scissors, and they cut some wool from his back. But they found it must first be spun into yarn—and they didn't know how: so they went to ask Mary's mother. She laughed at the poor little lamb with the big bare spots in his pretty white fleece. "If you are in such a hurry for gloves and socks," she said, "we will begin them at once. First, you must learn to spin." So she brought out the big spinning wheel and some tiny soft threads of wool and showed her how to spin the rolls into yarn. Mary liked to walk backward and forward, and twirl the great spinning wheel with a clothes-pin; but her yarn was all uneven, and kept snarling and breaking. Soon she grew tired—and cross, too, and then the yarn snarled worse than ever. As last Mary gave the spinning wheel a great whirl, as hard as she could, and ran off to the barn. There she hid in the straw and cried, until the little lamb found her and rubbed his head against her hair. Then she stopped crying to laugh, his ragged fleece looked so funny! Pretty soon she went back to the house and said she was sorry for being cross. Then Mother gave her a nice ball of yarn and some knitting needles and Aunt Hannah taught her to knit a sock.
How he went boating.
