started up the stairs.
Now up in the Merrill attic, off in a nice comfortable corner where it
wouldn't be in any one's way, was the girls' "dress-up box." In it were
kept all the clothes that Alice and Mary Jane were allowed to play with.
There were old coats and wonderful old hats that were so queer one would
never guess real ladies had worn them! And slippers and hair ribbons and
petticoats and shawls and silk dresses and morning dresses and parasols
and--oh, the most things you ever saw! Whenever Mrs. Merrill had something
that she couldn't use any more and that wasn't worth giving away to some
needy person, she put it in the girls' box. And whenever the girls, either
Alice with her big girl friends or Mary Jane with her little playmates
wanted to dress up or have a show they helped themselves out of the box--it
was great fun as you can see. Many a morning when Mary Jane was tired of
being Mary Jane, she slipped off to the attic and dressed up to be somebody
else.
This particular morning she hardly knew what she was going to be. She
pulled out a couple of gay hair ribbons, a pair of dark gloves and a
shopping bag. And the bag decided the play for her.
"I'm going to be Aunt Effie-like-I-thought-she-was," she said gayly, "and
I'm going to come and visit!" And then she set to work pulling stuff out of
the box and hunting just the right thing to dress in. She finally put on a
gay plaid skirt, a big black hat trimmed with a great pink rose, a yellow
waist and a red scarf. Then she pulled on the pair of gloves, picked up the
shopping bag and started for the stairs.
And who do you suppose she met coming up? Aunt Effie! The real Aunt Effie!
"Well, good morning!" said the real Aunt Effie smilingly, "who have we
here?"
Mary Jane looked long and carefully. She hated to take other people into
her games and then find out that they laughed at her. And she had learned
by experience that some grown folks never learn the game of "dress-up."
But Aunt Effie, the this-morning Aunt Effie, whose eyes looked rested and
smiling, seemed very much as though she might understand dress-up, very
much. Mary Jane decided to try her.
"I'm Aunt Effie come to visit," she said solemnly.
"Now, isn't that nice," answered Aunt Effie and she didn't seem one bit
surprised or amused or anything that grown folks sometimes are, "and who am
I?"
"Oh, will you play too?" cried Mary Jane clapping her hands happily.
"To be sure I will," laughed the real Aunt Effie, "that's what I came
upstairs for."
"Then you come over here by the box and I'll dress you up in some little
girl things and you can be Mary Jane," said the happy little girl. "Do you
like pink or blue sashes?"
Aunt Effie decided for blue and fortunately they found a nice, long blue
ribbon and a white dress of Alice's that was just the thing. Such fitting
and pinning and dressing and tying you never saw. And when it was all done,
Aunt Effie looked so much like a little girl that she couldn't help but act
like one and she and the "dress-up" auntie played together all the morning
long.
So much fun did they have that mother had to call twice to make them
understand that lunch was ready!
"Here, you show me how you want things put away, Mary Jane," said Aunt
Effie hastily when they finally heard. "Let's scramble them away so as not
to keep mother waiting."
"We'll put them right on the top in the box," said Mary Jane, "'cause we'll
want to play some more--lots!"
And they did, many times.
KEWPIE AND THE WASHING
One morning a few days after the dress-up fun Aunt Effie had to go down
town on some errands and Mary Jane was left to play by herself. She and
her auntie had grown to be such good play fellows that it was hard to find
something interesting to do without Aunt Effie to join in the fun.
"Why _don't_ you find something to do and then do it?" said Mrs. Merrill
after Mary Jane had made pictures on the window pane and rummaged through
the mending basket and poked her finger into the canary's cage and fingered
the forbidden little green balls on the ends of the fern leaves. "Little
girls can't expect to have a good time when they do all the things they
are not allowed to do. Go and play with Marie Georgiannamore, you haven't
played with her since Aunt Effie came."
"Will you play too?" asked Mary Jane.
"Not for a while yet, dear," replied mother, "because this is wash morning
and I have a new laundress to look after. Didn't you see her come around
the house when we were at breakfast? I have to go downstairs and show her
how we like our clothes washed and starched. Don't you want to go along?"
"Oh, yes, mother, I do!" cried Mary Jane happily. "I want to learn to wash,
too." Then she thought a minute. "But I believe I'd better take Marie
Georgiannamore along too--she's lonesome."
"I'm sure she is," answered Mrs. Merrill. "You run along and get her and
then we'll go to the laundry."
Mary Jane hurried upstairs for her big doll, but, though she searched every
place that a big doll ought to be, not a sign of Marie Georgiannamore could
she see.
"Mother!" called Mary Jane over the front stair railing, "Marie
Georgiannamore's lost!"
"Lost--no, surely not," said Mrs. Merrill and she started up the stairs to
hunt for the misplaced dolly. "Oh, I remember now, dear," she added when
she was half way up, "Aunt Effie took her clothes off to wash them and I
expect the dolly is some place in her room. Get your biggest kewpie and
come on, I can't wait too long."
Now Kewpie, the biggest kewpie, was the doll with the broad smile who slept
with Mary Jane every night. Other dolls got their hair mussed or their
clothes untidied or something; but Kewpie could always be depended on to be
neat and smiling no matter where he slept or what happened to him--a most
satisfactory doll to take to bed as you can see. Mary Jane ran into her
room to get him but her bed was all neatly made and Kewpie was nowhere to
be seen.
"Kewpie's lost too," called Mary Jane.
"No, he isn't," laughed mother, who by that time was at the bottom of the
stairs, "he must be right there, you had him in bed last night, you know."
Mary Jane ran back and poked her hand under the pillow; looked under the
bed; on the dresser and on the window seat. No Kewpie was to be found.
"You'll find him in a minute," Mrs. Merrill called up the stairs, "and then
you come down and meet me--I'll be looking for you, dear." And then she
hurried on to her waiting duties.
Mary Jane hunted and hunted but she didn't find Kewpie. She did find her
rag doll tucked back in the far corner of the closet and she began playing
with her and forgot all about Kewpie and the new laundress and even about
her own lonesomeness with Aunt Effie away. She had such a good time
dressing the rag doll in new clothes and going visiting with her and all
that, that she didn't notice mother when she twice peeped into the door to
see if her little girl was safe and happy. First thing Mary Jane knew, it
was lunch time--you know how quickly the clock does run round and round
when you are having a good time.
Now on wash day the Merrills didn't have their lunch on the dining table as
they did on other days; no, because they liked to do different things and
wash day is a very good day to be different. On that day Mrs. Merrill
fixed a tempting little tray for each person and left all the trays on the
kitchen table. Then each person as he or she came home, father and Alice
and Aunt Effie (and of course mother and Mary Jane who were already
at home, had trays too), went into the kitchen and got his or her own
tray--the trays could be told apart by the napkin rings marked with
initials--and carried it into the living room and sat down in a comfortable
chair and ate lunch. And afterwards, each person carried his or her own
tray back to the kitchen table. They thought that way of eating lunch was
lots of fun and Mary Jane well remembered how big and important she felt
the first day mother allowed her to carry her own tray (with the glass of
milk on mother's tray for safe keeping, of course) and to hold it on her
own lap like big folks instead of sitting up to the piano bench like a
baby! Mary Jane felt bigger that day than she ever had in all her life.
Just as she had picked up her tray and was going out of the kitchen on this
particular noon, the new laundress came up from the laundry. Of course that
wasn't so very unusual for Mary Jane often met the laundress in the kitchen
at noon time, but it was unusual to have the laundress step up and lay
something on her tray. Mary Jane had to hold tight to keep from spilling
something she was so surprised!
"I guess this must be yours, little girl," the laundress said, "I found it
in one of the sheets." And Mary Jane looked and saw her Kewpie that she had
hunted so hard to find.
"Oh, that must be my fault!" exclaimed mother. "I gathered the sheets up
in such a hurry this morning that I quite forgot to look for Kewpie--I'm
sorry!"
Mary Jane looked up at the kindly face of the new laundress, "Thank you
so much," she said, "and I'm coming down to see you after I have eaten my
lunch."
So as soon as she had lunched and had carried her tray back to the kitchen
table, she hurried downstairs to the laundry. That new laundress seemed to
know a great deal about little girls and to like them for she answered all
Mary Jane's questions and told stories and didn't seem to be bothered a bit
by having a little guest.
"There!" she said finally, "I'm ready to hang out. Do you want to come
along to the yard and hold the clothes pins?"
"I'll come pretty soon," said Mary Jane, and then she added importantly, "I
have something I want to do first."
"Come along then, when you're through," answered the laundress
unsuspiciously, and she picked up the heavy basket and went out of doors.
Left alone, Mary Jane slipped over to the wringer--that was the one thing
above all others in the laundry that interested her and she did want to see
how it worked. She turned the handle slowly three or four times, watching
the cogs as she did so to see how they fit into each other so neatly and
then so quickly slipped out again.
"I do think that's funny," she said thoughtfully; "there must be something
in there that makes them act so, I guess I'd better see what it is." And
slowly turning the handle with one hand, she stuck an inquiring finger in
between the cogs.
Of the few minutes that followed, Mary Jane never had a very good idea.
She knew she must have screamed with the pain of a hurt finger because the
laundress rushed in from the yard, mother came from upstairs and in a few
minutes Aunt Effie hurried breathlessly down the stairs. Then, before long,
the doctor was there too, and her finger was all tied up with sticks on
each side and father hurried in the front door and asked her how she'd like
a nice, long, Christmasy stick of candy. It all happened just that quick.
"I think things is so funny," said Mary Jane later as she luxuriously
licked her candy. "If Marie Georgiannamore hadn't hid and if Kewpie hadn't
gone to the washing and if I hadn't wondered about that wringer thing, I
wouldn't have had this candy that I've wanted for--for ninety-seven days."
"Yes," agreed the doctor as he went out of the door, "things is funny. And
my advice to you, young lady, is this; next time you want to see how a
wringer works, ask before you investigate. Another time you might lose,
instead of bruise, your finger."
"I will," nodded Mary Jane, "only I don't want to know how it works any
more--I know enough now, I do."
JUNIOR'S SHOWER BATH
It's very funny to go around the house with your finger tied up in a
bandage and two strips of wood--that is, it's funny the first day. By the
second day it's queer and after that it's no fun at all; it's a bother.
Long before Mary Jane was allowed to use her hand again she had decided
that never, _never_, NEVER would she poke her finger into anything. It
takes only a second to poke a finger in but it takes a good long time to
get a badly hurt finger well, she had learned that.
For the first three days Aunt Effie played with her all the day long and
that wasn't so bad. They played dress up and school and Aunt Effie showed
her how she had school when she was a little girl. And they made new
dresses for all the dolls; and straightened the drawers of all the doll
dressers and--well, they did every single thing that Mary Jane could
think of or Aunt Effie could plan. And then, without a minute's warning a
telegram came; a telegram which said that Aunt Effie must come home at once
because her sister was sick.
And after that Mary Jane was lonesome, oh, so very lonesome and she
couldn't think of half enough things to do to fill the days. For, you see,
Mrs. Merrill had her duties and father had to go to his work and Alice had
her school and Doris had the chicken pox so no one, much as they might have
wished to, could spend every minute of the day with a little girl who was
perfectly well except for a hurt finger. That little girl had to play by
herself a part of the time.
Mary Jane was standing by her mother's dresser, a couple of mornings after
Aunt Effie left, when the cleaning woman came into the room to give it its
weekly cleaning.
"Why don't you help here, Mary Jane?" suggested Mrs. Merrill; "you could
dust my dresser things with your well hand and lay each thing, as you dust
it, on the bed. Then I'll shake the dresser cover and Amanda will put
the dust sheet on the bed and everything will be ready for cleaning in a
jiffy."
If there was one thing above another that Mary Jane loved to do, it was to
handle the pretty things on her mother's dresser. Ordinarily she wasn't
allowed to touch a thing there, so she quickly replied, "Yes, mother, I'd
love to help," and then took the dusting cloth Mrs. Merrill handed her and
set to work.
She dusted off the pin tray and the toilet water bottle and brushed the
fringe of the lamp shade--she knew exactly what to do because she had
watched her mother many times.
"There, now!" she said in a satisfied voice, "it's all ready for the cover
cloth. Can you put it on, 'Manda?" Amanda Rice was the good cleaning woman
who came every week to set the Merrill house in apple pie order; she and
Mary Jane were fast friends.
"Jest a little minite, honey," replied Amanda, "soon as ever I gets this
rain room clean."
Just off Mrs. Merrill's room was a tiny room which opened also into the
bathroom and in this tiny room was a shower bath. Amanda insisted on
calling it the rain room because the water came down from the ceiling like
rain; and she always seemed to have a fear that something about that room
would hurt her. She was most particular to clean that room before she did
either the bathroom or Mrs. Merrill's room--she seemed to want the bad job
out of the way.
Perhaps when Mary Jane asked her to hurry with the cover cloth, Amanda
hurried a little too fast with her scouring of faucets or perhaps she was
just careless. However it happened, she turned on the cold water and it
poured over her from the ceiling in an ice cold shower.
"Heavens! Honey! Lor' a mercy! De water hit me!" she shouted and she ran,
dripping and screaming out of the shower room, out of the bedroom and down
the hall.
Mrs. Merrill came hurrying to see what the matter might be and Mary Jane
jumped to turn off the water before it should splatter out on the bedroom
floor. And then, while Mrs. Merrill was busy comforting Amanda and hunting
some dry clothes for her, Mary Jane sat down on the bed room floor to
think. How funny Amanda had looked with the water running all over her
clothes! Mary Jane, who had been used to a shower bath from the time she
was a tiny little girl, had never before realized how funny it seemed to
other folks. "I expect Doris would think it was funny," she thought. "I
wonder if she knows about it. And wouldn't Junior look--" but Mrs. Merrill
bustled into the room just then and Mary Jane had no more time for
thoughts.
Mrs. Merrill worked rapidly to make up for lost time. She shook the dresser
scarf out of the window, brushed off the window-seat pillows and finished
making the room ready for Amanda. "Now, dear," she said to Mary Jane when
everything was finished, "Amanda is coming in here to sweep, why don't you
go out and play a while with Junior? See? He's out in the yard. If you play
nicely, you won't hurt your finger, I'm sure."
Mary Jane didn't care much about playing with Junior just then; she would
far rather have stayed and help Amanda sweep. So she walked very slowly
down the stairs and out of doors and was none too cordial in her greeting
to Junior. But he didn't seem to mind and as it's very hard to keep on
snubbing a person who doesn't notice he is being snubbed, Mary Jane soon
gave it up and they began making mud pies. Nice goo-y mud pies out of the
black mud in the to-be-geranium bed near the house.
But hardly had they finished their pies and arranged them on the edge of
the porch to bake, before Junior's mother called him to come home.
"She's always calling you home," protested Mary Jane, "but I 'pose you'll
have to go or you can't ever come over here again!"
"Yes," agreed Junior, "I'd better go home. But I'll come back again." And
he started to wipe his muddy hands on his trousers.
"Oh, don't, Junior!" cried Mary Jane. "You know what your mother'll say!
She don't like mud pies anyway. Come into the house and wash 'em before you
go."
The two children skipped into the house and upstairs to the bathroom where
Mary Jane filled the bowl with warm water--then she thought of something.
"Do you like to walk out of doors in the rain?" she asked craftily.
"Yes," replied Junior in surprise, "only my mother won't let me."
"Don't you think she'd let you if it rained indoors?"
"I don't know, 'cause it don't," replied Junior decidedly.
"Yes, it does, it does at our house," said Mary Jane. "You stand inside
this door, and I'll show you."
Junior seemed to have some objection to closets so it took coaxing to get
him where Mary Jane wanted him. But when, on careful inspection, he
found that this closet had two doors, quite unlike other closets he was
acquainted with, and also that it looked very harmless, he stepped over the
high sill and onto the tile floor. Quick as a flash Mary Jane reached up
and turned on the water--and down came the deluge!
Water so cold that it took his breath away so he couldn't scream and then,
in a minute, so hot that it burned him, descended from the spray in the
ceiling and soaked him to the skin. Mary Jane sat on the door sill, in all
the splatter, and laughed and laughed. Junior grabbed for the door and
shook it trying to get out--just as Mrs. Merrill opened the door from her
bedroom onto the sight. Junior darted passed her and ran down the stairs,
dripping water and mud from his dirty hands on every step and screaming at
the top of his voice all the way.
"What in the world--" began Mrs. Merrill.
"We was just talking about water from the sky in the house," explained
Mary Jane innocently, "and Junior was surprised to see it come. I guess he
thought water from the sky in the house would be dry," she added.
"And I," said Mrs. Merrill as she took off her dusting cap and reaching
into the clothes closet for her coat, "will have to leave my work and go
over and explain and apologize. Mary Jane, you sit right there on that
chair till I come back and you can't have another little playmate over this
week--not one!"
Mary Jane sat down on the big chair and started counting the boards in
the floor. "One, two, three, six nine seven, ten," she said to herself
patiently. "Then if nobody can come to see me, I guess I'll have to find
somebody right in this house. I wonder--"
What did she wonder?--wait and see.
PLAYMATE DOROTHY
"You sit right there, Dorothy, and make yourself at home," said Mary Jane,
"and I'll get Marie Georgiannamore for you to play with."
"What in the world!" exclaimed Mrs. Merrill to herself as she passed Mary
Jane's door on the morning after Junior had had his shower bath. "Who can
be there now? I particularly told Mary Jane not to invite any children in,
this week." She opened the door and was already to say, "Whose little girl
are you?" as she usually did to new friends that Mary Jane brought home.
But this time there wasn't any little girl there! Only Mary Jane and her
dolls and her teddy bears playing as contentedly as you please.
"Oh!" laughed Mrs. Merrill, much relieved, "that's a joke on me, Mary Jane;
I thought you were talking to some new little girl. I didn't know that you
had named one of your dolls Dorothy."
"I was talking to a little girl," answered Mary Jane solemnly, "and I
haven't changed the name of one of my dolls--not one."
"Well, that's nice," said Mrs. Merrill, but she didn't pay more than half
attention to what Mary Jane said because she just happened to think of
something that she surely must order from the grocery as soon as she could
get downstairs. "I'm glad you are having such a good time." And she kissed
her little daughter lightly and went away.
"You'll have to excuse her, Dorothy," apologized Mary Jane, "grown folks
don't know much sometimes and I'm sure she didn't see you or she'd have
asked you to stay for lunch." She pulled two chairs over to the window
seat, got out paper and colored pencils and then sat down in one chair.
"Now you make snow on your paper and I'll make a picture."
For some minutes there was quiet in the nursery except for the sound of
Mary Jane's pencil rubbing, rubbing on the paper.
"There!" she said at last, "there's a cow and two chickens and a strawberry
like they have at my great-grandmother's that Dr. Smith told me about.
Let's see your snow," she added politely. She picked up the blank piece
of white paper that lay in front of the other chair and looked at it
thoughtfully. "You do make nice snow, Dorothy," she said, "it's so clean
and white. Now let's go down and see if lunch is ready."
When she reached the door of the nursery, she stepped back to let some one
pass out in front of her and as she went downstairs she was careful to keep
well to one side so that there was plenty of room for some one to walk
beside her. She went through the empty living room, through the dining room
and out into the kitchen where her mother was working.
"May Dorothy and I have our lunch?" she asked.
"Lunch?" asked Mrs. Merrill, and in her hurry she only noticed half what
Mary Jane said, "yes, in just a minute. It's almost time for father and I'm
so late. Will you run into the dining room, dear, and see that the chairs
are all set up to the table as they should be? That's a good little
helper."
Mary Jane hurried back to the dining room and set five chairs up to the
table--to be sure they were a bit crowded and so was the extra place
Mary Jane set with napkin, plate, glass and silver that she got from the
sideboard, but Mary Jane didn't seem to notice that, she was quite pleased
and satisfied with her work.
"Now you sit right here, Dorothy," she said, "and I'll sit beside you so
you won't be lonesome." She pushed her chair beside the vacant one and
climbed into it.
Father and mother and Alice came into the room one after another and each
exclaimed over the vacant chair.
"Who's the company?" asked father.
"Why the chair?" demanded Alice.
"I thought you knew how to count, Mary Jane," added mother. "Didn't you
know there were only four of us? You're a funny little girl!"
"I can count," said Mary Jane with great dignity, "and I know there are
four of us when five of us isn't here. But I had to have a chair for
Dorothy."
And then, for the first time, Mrs. Merrill realized that something was
going on in Mary Jane's mind--something new.
"Dorothy?" she asked kindly; "who is this Dorothy you have been telling me
about?"
"She's the little girl who comes to see me when you won't let me play with
anybody come to see me," explained Mary Jane patiently, "and I'm glad she's
here because I'm lonesome and I want her to stay for lunch because she's a
nice little girl and I don't like people to laugh."
Mrs. Merrill frowned at Mr. Merrill and Alice who showed signs of laughing
and then gathered her little girl into her arms. "Have you been as lonesome
as that?" she asked.
"Just as lonesome as lonesome," answered Mary Jane. "I'm lonesomer than
when nobody comes to see me because this time I know nobody's coming to see
me even if they wouldn't anyway."
"Why is she so lonesome?" asked Mr. Merrill who seemed to understand just
what his little girl meant even though what she said was a little mixed.
"Can't anybody play with her?"