Lucy came back to the table where Dora was working. She was so proud of her cooking that she no longer felt cross. She took an apple which had a big speck on the side. After dinner everybody hurried to get the dishes washed and then Mrs. Merrill and the children went to the city. There was no need to lock the house, for Mr. Merrill would be at home. The printing-press did not run on Saturday afternoons. It was late before the shoppers came back. Dora did not wait to open the packages before telling Father that she had a pretty blue coat. Lucy had another brown one, not like her old coat, but a different shade of brown. To go with the coat was a round brown sailor hat with a ribbon hanging down the back. Dora’s hat was just like it, only dark blue, with a blue ribbon. Then Dora asked Father if he had been lonesome. Father said he had been too busy to be lonesome. Dora wondered what he had been doing. On the floor before the Franklin stove was spread a newspaper, with chips on it, as though Father had been whittling. Mr. Merrill looked at the new coats and hats and thought them very pretty. After supper, when they were all in the parlor, he began to whittle again. Lucy and Dora were learning their Sunday-school lesson. Mrs. Merrill had just found out that they had not even looked at it, and she said it must be learned at once. She should be much ashamed of them if they went to Sunday school without knowing the lesson. Dora hurried as much as she could. She read the lesson and looked up the Bible references and tried to answer the questions. But all the time she wondered _what_ Father was making. As soon as she finished she asked him. “What do they look like?” inquired Father. “Like little dolls, only in pieces,” said Dora. “That’s just what they are,” said Mr. Merrill, and then he smiled at her. Dora’s eyes grew wide. “_Father!_” she said. “Are you trying to make marionettes like those we saw in Boston? Are you really?” “That’s what I’m trying to do,” said Mr. Merrill, and he fitted a little arm to one of his bodies. “These are just tiny ones but I thought we’d begin small and see how we come out.” “Is it to be Jack and the Beanstalk?” asked Dora eagerly. “Do let it be that, because we know how to play it.” “This is Jack I’m working on,” said Mr. Merrill. “That’s his mother there, not put together, but I don’t know whether I can make a proper cow.” “Father!” exclaimed Lucy, “Dora had a toy cow once on wheels and the wheels were broken. Couldn’t you use that cow? You could take it apart at the joints.” “I am a printer, not a butcher,” said Mr. Merrill, “but I’ll look at that cow, if Dora is willing we should use it.” Dora was willing. The cow belonged to her very little girlhood. She never played with it now.