I'll teach you myself;'' and the Other Aunt said, ``Some day you
shall go to cooking-school and learn everything; you know little
girls can't cook.''

But Margaret said, ``I don't want to wait till I'm big; I want to
cook now; and I don't want to do cooking-school cooking, but little
girl cooking, all by myself.''

So she kept on trying to learn, but she burned her fingers and
spoiled her dresses worse than ever, and her messes were so bad
they had to be thrown out, every one of them; and she cried and cried.
And then one day her grandmother said, ``It's a shame that child
should not learn to cook if she really wants to so much;'' and her
mother said ``Yes, it is a shame, and she shall learn! Let's get
her a small table and some tins and aprons, and make a little
cook-book all her own out of the old ones we wrote for ourselves
long ago,--just the plain, easy things anybody can make.'' And both
her aunts said, ``Do! We will help, and perhaps we might put in
just a few cooking-school things beside.''

It was not long after this that Margaret had a birthday, and she
was taken to the kitchen to get her presents, which she thought
the funniest thing in the world. There they all were, in the
middle of the room: first her father's present, a little table
with a white oilcloth cover and casters, which would push right
under the big table when it was not being used. Over a chair her
grandmother's present, three nice gingham aprons, with sleeves and
ruffled bibs. On the little table the presents of the aunties,
shiny new tins and saucepans, and cups to measure with, and spoons,
and a toasting-fork, and ever so many things; and then on one corner