CHAPTER XII.
MARY IMITATES NAVAJO BLANKETS.
On her return from an afternoon spent at Professor Schmidt's, Mary remarked to Aunt Sarah, "For the first time in my life I have an original idea!" "Do tell me child, what it is!" "The 'New Colonial' rag rugs we have lately finished are fine, but I'd just love to have a Navajo blanket like those owned by Professor Schmidt; and I intend to make a rag rug in imitation of his Navajo blanket." "Yes," answered her Aunt, "I have always greatly admired them myself, especially the large gray one which covers the Professor's own chair in the library.

The Professor brought them with him when he returned from 'Cutler's Ranch' at Rociada, near Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he visited his nephew, poor Raymond, or rather, I should say, fortunate Raymond, an only child of the Professor's sister.

A quiet, studious boy, he graduated at the head of his class at an early age, but he inherited the weak lungs of his father, who died of consumption.
Raymond was a lovable boy, with a fund of dry humor and wit--the idol of his mother, who, taking the advice of a specialist, accompanied her boy, as a last resort, to New Mexico, where, partly owing to his determination to get well, proper food and daily rides on the mesa, on the back of his little pinto pony, he regained perfect health, and today is well, happily married and living in Pasadena, California, so I have been told by Frau Schmidt, who dearly loves the boy." "But Mary, forgive an old woman for rambling away from the subject in which you are interested--Navajo blankets.

Ever since we planned to make a rug with a swastika in the centre, I nave been trying to evolve from my brain (and your Uncle John says my bump of inventiveness is abnormally large) a Navajo rag rug for the floor of the room you intend to furnish as Ralph's den, in the home you are planning.

Well, my dear, a wooden crochet hook in your deft fingers will be the magic wand which will perform a miracle and transform into Navajo blankets such very commonplace articles as your discarded gray eiderdown kimona, and a pair of your Uncle's old gray trousers, which have already been washed and ripped by Sibylla, to be used for making carpet rags.