[Ill.u.s.tration: Looked pleased and important.]

"You see, it's this way," she continued as she took her little book and sat in the rocking chair. "I am very anxious to get through every recipe in my cook book before Mother comes home, so I guess we'll just finish all the potato recipes to-day,--and give Billy a Potato Lunch! Won't that be fine?"

The Kitchen People all smiled in approval.

She went to the window.

"O--h, Billy! Billy!" she called; "you're invited to a Potato Lunch in our dining-room at twelve o'clock."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "O--h, Billy!"]

"All right, I'll be on time," answered Billy from the garden.

"Let's see," said Mary Frances to herself, "four more recipes--about two potatoes each. Four times two,--eight."

She washed the potatoes carefully, and had no sooner set about paring them, than the kitchen door opened, and in walked Aunt Maria.

"What in the world is that child doing? Paring potatoes? Did I ever!--Such thin, close parings, too! How well she does it!--But you must drop them into cold water as soon as they are pared, child. I wish I could stay and show you how to cook, but duty calls me--I must be going!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Drop them into cold water."]

Mary Frances stepped to the door with her.

"When I was your age, child, I could cook 'most everything and piece patch-work for quilts,"--and she kept Mary Frances on the porch ten minutes, telling her that little girls weren't brought up any more to be useful the way they were when she was a little girl.

"Oh, my lid!" sang Tea Kettle, as Mary Frances stepped back into the kitchen. "Oh, my aunt!--has the old lady went?"

"Gone!" said Big Iron Pot from the back of the stove.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Oh, my aunt!"]

"Who dares correct me?" simmered Tea Kettle.

"I dare," sputtered Iron Pot. "I dare,--and I dare tell you other things, too!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Who dares correct me?" "I dare!"]

"You do, do you?" bubbled Tea Kettle. "You do! Well, what do you dare tell me?"

"I dare tell you, Mister," said Iron Pot, "that you've got a dirty face--yes, a black face."

Tea Kettle, it was plain to be seen, was boiling mad. Steam blew out of his nose in every direction.

Now, everybody who knows anything about a tea kettle can imagine how very angry Tea Kettle was.

As soon as he could get his breath, he blew steam all over Iron Pot.

"My face is black, is it? Well, yours is black,--and it will soon be black and blue!"

"You swallow them words!" and Iron Pot raised his queer little fists.

"Sput!" mocked Tea Kettle, getting ready to spout again. "Take that!"

w.a.n.g! came down the little fist,--but not on the lid of Tea Kettle. Oh, no; for just as that was going to happen, Mary Frances lifted him high in the air.

"Let go of me! Let me at Iron Pot!" He was at white heat.

"Be quiet!" said Mary Frances, shaking him quite hard. "What's all this about?"

"Iron Pot commenced it!" sullenly simmered Tea Kettle. "Iron Pot called me names!"

"Why," said Mary Frances, "this is disgraceful! Now, you sit there!" She put Tea Kettle on the front of the stove.

"And you, there!" She pulled Big Iron Pot as far back as she could.

"Now, behave yourselves!"

Then she sat down to rest.

"What makes them quarrel so, I wonder," Mary Frances said half to herself. "All the Kitchen People seem so kind and helpful."

"Why, don't you know, child?" asked Aunty Rolling Pin. "I thought everybody knew that story."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Don't you know, child?" "Let me at him!"]

A story! Mary Frances was always ready to listen to a story.

"Won't you tell me, please?"

Aunty Rolling Pin cleared her voice, and rolled back an inch or two to a more comfortable place on the table.

"You see, it's this way, child," she began.

"In the days of your great-grandmother there were no stoves, only open fireplaces were used for cooking,--and kettles were just as black then as that old black Pot there.

[Ill.u.s.tration: In the days of your great grandmother]

"So, when the Pot called the Kettle black, the Kettle said:

"'Black yourself!' and no harm was done.

"But when your mother got that fine new cook stove, she bought that bright, shiny Kettle, too.

"But that silly old Pot doesn't know that the new Kettle is bright and shiny, so it keeps on calling names. That Pot doesn't know it's fooling itself,--for all it sees is its own homely old black self in the shiny Kettle making faces.

"And that's what comes of calling names, child," chuckled Aunty Rolling Pin, as she ended her story.