Presently Martha went out of the room and came back with something held in her hands under her apron.

“What does tha’ think,” she said, with a cheerful grin.  “I’ve brought thee a present.”

“A present!” exclaimed Mistress Mary.  How could a cottage full of fourteen hungry people give any one a present!

“A man was drivin’ across the moor peddlin’,” Martha explained.  “An’ he stopped his cart at our door.  He had pots an’ pans an’ odds an’ ends, but mother had no money to buy anythin’.  Just as he was goin’ away our ’Lizabeth Ellen called out, ’Mother, he’s got skippin’-ropes with red an’ blue handles.’  An’ mother she calls out quite sudden, ’Here, stop, mister!  How much are they?’ An’ he says ‘Tuppence,’ an’ mother she began fumblin’ in her pocket an’ she says to me, ’Martha, tha’s brought me thy wages like a good lass, an’ I’ve got four places to put every penny, but I’m just goin’ to take tuppence out of it to buy that child a skippin’-rope,’ an’ she bought one an’ here it is.”

She brought it out from under her apron and exhibited it quite proudly.  It was a strong, slender rope with a striped red and blue handle at each end, but Mary Lennox had never seen a skipping-rope before.  She gazed at it with a mystified expression.

“What is it for?” she asked curiously.

“For!” cried out Martha.  “Does tha’ mean that they’ve not got skippin’-ropes in India, for all they’ve got elephants and tigers and camels!  No wonder most of ’em’s black.  This is what it’s for; just watch me.”

And she ran into the middle of the room and, taking a handle in each hand, began to skip, and skip, and skip, while Mary turned in her chair to stare at her, and the queer faces in the old portraits seemed to stare at her, too, and wonder what on earth this common little cottager had the impudence to be doing under their very noses.  But Martha did not even see them.  The interest and curiosity in Mistress Mary’s face delighted her, and she went on skipping and counted as she skipped until she had reached a hundred.

“I could skip longer than that,” she said when she stopped.  “I’ve skipped as much as five hundred when I was twelve, but I wasn’t as fat then as I am now, an’ I was in practice.”

Mary got up from her chair beginning to feel excited herself.

“It looks nice,” she said.  “Your mother is a kind woman.  Do you think I could ever skip like that?”

“You just try it,” urged Martha, handing her the skipping-rope.  “You can’t skip a hundred at first, but if you practise you’ll mount up.  That’s what mother said.  She says, ‘Nothin’ will do her more good than skippin’ rope.  It’s th’ sensiblest toy a child can have.  Let her play out in th’ fresh air skippin’ an’ it’ll stretch her legs an’ arms an’ give her some strength in ’em.’”

It was plain that there was not a great deal of strength in Mistress Mary’s arms and legs when she first began to skip.  She was not very clever at it, but she liked it so much that she did not want to stop.