Mary Jane - Her Visit | Page 9

there with him, and I'm all alone in the house, I just wish and wish I had a little girl about your size here to talk to. I'm so glad you're come, Mary Jane, you're such good company!"
And immediately, would you believe it? Mary Jane forgot all about being homesick and maybe going to cry, and began wondering what she could do for her grandmother!
"What are we going to do to-day, Grandmother?" she asked as they went down the stairs together.
"Let me see," said Grandmother thoughtfully, looking at the little girl. "First, of course, we'll get breakfast--wouldn't you like fresh corn bread and maple syrup?" Mary Jane nodded happily, for she liked Grandmother's corn bread. "Then we'll do the dishes and make the beds--but that won't take long with you helping me. Then we'll peel the potatoes and start the meat cooking for dinner. Then we'll--by the way, Mary Jane," she asked suddenly, "what have you in those two packages in your trunk?"
Mary Jane stared at her grandmother a minute and tried to think whatever she might mean. Then she remembered. "Those two bundles wrapped up in brown paper and tied and everything?"
"Those are the ones," nodded Grandmother. "I saw them the other morning when I unpacked your trunk but we were in a hurry to get-out doors then so I didn't ask about them. What are they?"
"I don't know," said Mary Jane. "Mother put them in and she said you'd understand. She said just let you see and you'd know what she meant."
"Then I guess I know," said Grandmother, laughing. "We have to look at them!"
"Let's go now," said Mary Jane.
"Oh, my no," replied Grandmother, "before breakfast? I should say not! We'll do all the things we planned to do, right straight through the plan. Then we'll get those bundles and see if I can guess what your mother meant."
Mary Jane liked the good breakfast Grandmother prepared and she loved helping set the table and clear it off and help with the work like a grown-up person, but she was glad when at last everything was done and she and Grandmother went up the stairs to look at those mysterious bundles.
"You get the bundles out of your trunk, Mary Jane," said Grandmother, "and I'll get my glasses."
"Then shall we go down' to the sitting-room?" asked Mary Jane.
"No, we'll stay right up here," said Grandmother, smiling, "because unless I miss my guess, we'll want to be up here before we're through anyway."
That puzzled Mary Jane more than ever because, in all the three days she had been there. Grandmother had never sat upstairs, but always in her big rocker at the bay window in the room they called the sitting-room. She hurried to her room, raised the cover of her little trunk and turned it way back so it wouldn't fall on her. Then she reached in and got out the two bundles, and hurried back to Grandmother's room.
"There's some writing on them," she announced.
"Then I expect that will help us guess what we are to do with them," said Grandmother, and she adjusted her glasses. "Let's see what it says." She read off the first one, "'This is the way Mary Jane learns to sew.' Shall we open this first, Mary Jane?" she asked, "or shall we read what the other one says?"
"Oh, I know, I know! I know!" cried Mary Jane, clapping her hands. "I know what that is, Grandmother, only I came away in such a hurry that I forgot all about it! It's a present for you--I made it all myself! Let's open it first."
"A present for me?" asked Grandmother. "I guess we will open it first." And she carefully undid the string, opened out the paper and looked inside. "A picture card! My dear little girl!" she exclaimed, "and you did it all yourself?"
"All myself," said Mary Jane proudly, and she leaned up against her grandmother and pointed out the perfections. "See? It's a picture of a little girl, that's me, and she's raking her garden. And here," she picked up another one, "this is a picture of a butterfly that flies over the garden. I did one of a little girl, that's me, with a pink sunbonnet and one with a sunflower and I sent those to my Aunt Effie. And these are for you."
"I certainly am pleased," said Grandmother heartily and she kissed Mary Jane once for each card. "And what else have we here?"
"That's my sewing things," said Mary Jane as she opened out the rest of the package; "that's my needle case and my thread and my cards to sew."
"Then let's have a sewing day," suggested Grandmother, "and you sew your cards and I'll do my mending."
"But first let's open the other bundle," suggested Mary Jane, who, like Grandmother, had forgotten