"Oh," said Mary Bell, "I always put on my working frock when I go out
to Mary Erskine's."

The working frock was a plain, loose woolen dress, which Mary Erskine
made for Mary Bell, and which Mary Bell, always put on in the morning,
whenever she came to the farm. Her own dress was taken off and
laid carefully away upon the bed, under the curtains. Her shoes and
stockings were taken off too, so that she might play in the brook if
she pleased, though Mary Erskine told her it was not best to remain in
the water long enough to have her feet get very cold.

When Mary Bell was dressed thus in her working frock, she was allowed
to play wherever she pleased, so that she enjoyed almost an absolute
and unbounded liberty. And yet there were some restrictions. She
must not go across the brook, for fear that she might get lost in the
woods, nor go out of sight of the house in any direction. She might
build fires upon any of the stumps or logs, but not within certain
limits of distance from the house, lest she should set the house on
fire. And she must not touch the axe, for fear that she might cut
herself, nor climb upon the wood-pile, for fear that it might fall
down upon her. With some such restrictions as these, she could do
whatever she pleased.

She was very much delighted, one morning in September, when she was
playing around the house in her working frock, at finding a great hole
or hollow under a stump, which she immediately resolved to have for
her oven. She was sitting down upon the ground by the side of it, and
she began to call out as loud as she could,

"Mary Erskine! Mary Erskine!"