ping.
She was particularly pleased with being allowed to help in getting
breakfast or tea, and in setting the table.

She rose accordingly very early on the morning after her arrival
there from the woods, as described in the last chapter, and put on
the working-dress which Mary Erskine had made for her, and which was
always kept at the farm. This was not the working-dress which was
described in a preceding chapter as the one which Mary Bell used to
play in, when out among the stumps. Her playing among the stumps was
two or three years before the period which we are now describing.
During those two or three years, Mary Bell had wholly outgrown her
first working-dress, and her mind had become improved and enlarged,
and her tastes matured more rapidly even than her body had grown.

She now no longer took any pleasure in dabbling in the brook, or
planting potatoes in the sand,--or in heating sham ovens in stumps and
hollow trees. She had begun to like realities. To bake a real cake for
breakfast or tea, to set a real table with real cups and saucers, for
a real and useful purpose, or to assist Mary Erskine in the care of
the children, or in making the morning arrangements in the room, gave
her more pleasure than any species of child's play could possibly
do. When she went out now, she liked to be dressed neatly, and take
pleasant walks, to see the views or to gather flowers. In a word,
though she was still in fact a child, she began to have in some degree
the tastes and feelings of a woman.

"What are you going to have for breakfast?" said Mary Bell to Mary
Erskine, while they were getting up.

"What should you like?" asked Mary Erskine in reply.

"Why I should like some roast potatoes, and a spider cake," said Mary
Bell.

The spider cake received its name from being baked before the fire
in a flat, iron vessel, called a spider. The spider was so called
probably, because, like the animal of that name, it had several legs
and a great round body. The iron spider, however, unlike its living
namesake, had a long straight tail, which, extending out behind,
served for a handle.

The spider cake being very tender and nice, and coming as it usually
did, hot upon the table, made a most excellent breakfast,--though this
was not the principal reason which led Mary Bell to ask for it. She
liked to _make_ the spider cake; for Mary Erskine, after mixing
and preparing the material, used to allow Mary Bell to roll it out to
its p