JUST then the gong sounded for dinner.

“What!” exclaimed the little girl. “Is it six o’clock already? Why, I had no idea how time had flown!”

“You must have enjoyed hearing me talk,” said Crow Shay. Then, noticing the Yarn Baby’s hair, he corrected himself.

“I mean, you must have enjoyed hearing us talk,” he said.

Then there came footsteps on the stairs.

“Mary Frances, didn’t you hear the gong? Mother sent me to look for you,” called the little girl’s brother Billy. “Where are you, anyway?” he asked as he bounded up the steps.

“Mercy!” exclaimed Crow Shay under his breath, as his face melted away.

Wooley Ball rolled over on her face.

The Yarn Baby fell over on her side and looked as dumb as a dumb-bell.

“I’m coming,” called Mary Frances. “I’ll be right down.”

“Oh, do not let anyone know about us,” muttered the Yarn Baby. “If you do, we’ll be deader than sixty coffin nails.”

“I’ll never tell about any of you, dear Yarn Baby,” whispered Mary Frances, hurrying away.

She had scarcely finished her dinner before her aunt came in.

“Seven o’clock,” said the old lady, after greeting the family; “seven o’clock is the time I said we would start our lesson, Mary Frances. Are you nearly ready?”

Poor Mary Frances! She felt like crying when she thought of how Crow Shay, and Wooley Ball and the Yarn Baby had been planning to give her lessons.

“Are you nearly ready?” repeated Aunt Maria.

“Why, yes, Aunt Maria. I will be ready as soon as I get my knitting bag. I carried it upstairs,” she answered.

“I’ll wait for you right here at the foot of the stairs,” said her aunt. “Then we will go over to my house where no one will interrupt us.”

“Oh, dear,” thought Mary Frances. “I don’t want to go! I guess I shall have to, though. It would disappoint Aunt Maria so dreadfully if I did not.”

Mary Frances paused at the door of the room, thinking that she might hear her new friends talking, but there wasn’t a sound.

“Let me see—what shall I take?” she thought. “I don’t dare take the Yarn Baby. Aunt Maria would think it foolish. I do not want to take Wooley Ball for fear Aunt Maria will use her. I can take Crow Shay, though. He might enjoy the lesson!”

She selected some Germantown zephyr and put it into her knitting bag; then she carefully laid Crow Shay in.

“You will help me a lot,” she said as she drew up the strings.

Her aunt was waiting for her. She ran to kiss her mother good-bye, then hurried off with the old lady.