Once
upon a time there was a little who lived in
India, and her name was Mary.
And
she was fond of poking fires.
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Here
is a wonderful story that has been long
forgotten. It was an instant hit with my son,
aged 4. Mary clearly
lives in India. She is always poking fires. Her
mother scolds her and pulls her away. One day
while here mother is attending to the servants,
Mary runs to the cook-house and beings poking the
fire joyfully.
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 But the
cooking places were very high up, and she could
not reach them properly, so she pulled forward a
big kettle, in which the cook boiled the hot
water.
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She
is then able to poke the fire splendidly,
"and she was very much pleased." Then she falls over and her head was
burned right off!!
How frightened Domingo (the
cook) was when he found a "Missy Baba"
with no head lying in his kitchen.
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 He picked
her up, and sets her on her feet.
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He
pops the kettle on her head, and ties on her
bonnet to keep it firm. Then he draws the best eyes, nose
and mouth he can.
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 And sent her
back to her mother.
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[And
doesn't Little Kettle-head look grand!] She hides from her mother and
father, and does a lot of crying.
And the only sound she
makes is, "Clip - clap - clapper - apper -
apper".
On Christmas Eve, Father
Christmas leaves her a doll's head from a broken
doll.
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 She got up
at once, holding it carefully in both hands.
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She
carries it to the looking-glass, then fetches a
gum-bottle, and sticks on her new head. |
 And sat very
still and quiet till the gum was quite hard.
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When
she re-unites with her mother and father, they
comment that her hair has grown a yard in one
night. And she never
goes near fires again.
A grave warning indeed for
all naughty children.
We don't know whether she
lives happily ever after, but we are told that
her head is never burned off again.
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