Mary Jane--Her Visit Part 14

"Let me see," said Alice. She looked around the yard but saw nothing that interested her. She looked across the road to Grandmother's lot and saw all the gra.s.ses and brush that flourished there.

"We ought to be able to find something over there," she said; "let's hunt."

So the three little girls scrambled over the fence and roamed through the lot. The lamb was used to a good deal of petting and he supposed, of course, that was what they had come for. So he poked himself into their way at every step.

"No, sir," said Alice, laughing; "we didn't come to play with you to-day! You run along, sir!" She rubbed her hand over his back to push him away and something rough and p.r.i.c.ky scratched her. She pulled at his wool and a small brown burr came off in her hand.

"Look! Girls!" she cried suddenly. "If he got this, there must be more in the lot!"

"Of course!" said Frances, looking scornfully at the burr Alice held up for her to see; "there's a million over there--see? They're an awful nuisance, burrs are, even this early in the season."

"They may be a nuisance," laughed Alice, "but I'll venture to say they'll make good doll houses for all that. Here! I'll show you what I think we can do." She ran over to where Frances had pointed out a lot of burrs, pulled off a handful and began sticking them together.

"Yes, it works," she said in a satisfied tone, "but let's not stop to make the houses here. Let's gather a lot of burrs and take them over to Grandmother's front yard. Then we can make a whole village!"

Frances and Mary Jane didn't quite see how a village was to come out of a lot of burrs, but Alice was so sure of what she was going to do that they thought she must be right. So they gathered up their skirts and filled them with burrs and then helped each other back over the fence.

Under the big pine tree, where the ground was the levelest of any place in the yard, Alice had them spread out all their burrs.

"Now," she said when the burrs were ready, "you make them stick together--so. Make eight rows of six burrs each. That will be the floor of the house. Then start up the sides for walls."

Frances and Mary Jane got the idea in a minute and they set to work in a jiffy. Such fun as it was! The houses and barns and churches grew so rapidly that none of the girls gave a minute's thought to p.r.i.c.ked fingers--there wasn't time! When the stock of burrs was entirely used up, Alice set the houses along in a straight line as though they were on a street. Frances put the barns back of the houses where they belonged and Mary Jane ran to her garden for nasturtiums to lay by the houses for gardens.

"But we haven't any dolls to live in the houses!" exclaimed Frances suddenly.

"That's easy," said Alice; "I've made dolls before. Grandmother showed me how years ago. Come on and we'll get some."

She led the girls back to the orchard, where by now tiny green apples were lying on the ground, scattered there by the summer winds.

"You girls get all the apples you can while I get the toothpicks." And she ran to the house.

"What does she mean?" asked Frances, who wasn't used to this sort of play.

"I don't know, but let's do what she says and then we'll find out,"

answered Mary Jane, who had great confidence in this big sister of hers. They filled their skirts with apples of all sizes and hurried back to the front yard where Alice, carrying a box of toothpicks, met them.

"Now we'll all make dolls," said Alice as she spread out the picks.

"Use the biggest apples for the body; stick in two toothpicks for arms and two for legs. And a middle-sized apple makes the head. Then take another toothpick and mark out eyes and nose and mouth--so!" And she set up the finished doll for the girls to see.

Frances and Mary Jane picked up apples and went to work too, and first thing they knew there was a doll standing in front of each house. They were just starting on animals, pigs and horses and cows which Alice showed them how to make, when Grandmother came out with a pitcher of lemonade and a basket of cookies. So the burr making turned into a party which lasted till Mr. Westland came tooting along the road and Frances had to go home.

EARNING MONEY

"Now if I only had a camera," said Alice as she and Mary Jane and her grandmother were sitting out on the back porch one morning, sh.e.l.ling peas for dinner, "I'd take a picture of you both. Wouldn't it make a good one?"

Grandmother looked at Mary Jane. The sunshine splattered through the cracks between the vine-covered lattice and shone on her bobbed brown hair, on her pink play dress and on the bright green pea pods in her lap. Mary Jane looked at her grandmother and saw the snow white hair, the kindly face that smiled above the big work ap.r.o.n and the busy hands.

"Wouldn't it, though!" they both exclaimed at exactly the same minute.

And then they all three had a good laugh.

"All the same I wish I had a camera," insisted Alice.

"Does your mother think you're old enough to know how to use one?"

asked Grandmother.

"Old enough, Grandmother!" exclaimed Mary Jane. "Alice's twelve!" And the way she said twelve showed that she thought twelve was very, very old indeed.

Grandmother smiled and Alice added, "She's willing I should have one, Grandmother, only I must buy it myself. And saving money out of my allowance is slow work. I've a dollar now but I need seventy-five cents more."

"Seems to me you should be able to earn that much," said Grandmother.

"Earn it?" asked Alice. "How?"

"Oh, by some sort of work," answered Grandmother.

"Oh, could I really?" exclaimed Alice delightedly. "What could I do?"

"Could I earn some too?" asked Mary Jane eagerly.

"What do you want money for?" laughed Alice, as though a little girl wouldn't have use for such a thing as money! "You always want to do everything, Mary Jane!"

"Of course she does," said Grandmother comfortably, "and you do too.

The thing I'm thinking about is more fun if done by two anyway. But what do you want your money for, dear?" she asked the little girl.

"I want it to get a present for my dear mother," said Mary Jane, "a present that she don't know anything about and that Daddah don't know anything about and that n.o.body gives me the money for. Can I really truly earn some money?"

"Surely," replied Grandmother. "See those woods, girls?" She pointed across the garden and across the cornfield to the woods about a quarter of a mile away. "In those woods are blackberry bushes, lots of them.

And this is about the beginning of the blackberry season. Now if you girls really want to earn some money you may take your little baskets and go berrying. I'll buy all you can pick at ten cents a quart. You ought to easily get your seventy-five cents that way, Alice, for the bushes ate usually loaded with berries."

"But the berries are yours to begin with," objected Alice, who liked to be fair; "we can't sell you something that already belongs to you."

"Of course you can't," replied Grandmother, much pleased with Alice's honesty. "I shouldn't have said 'buy the berries'; I should have said 'pay you for the picking' at ten cents a quart. If I 'bought' the berries of any one I would have to pay fifteen or twenty cents a quart.

And if I hired some one to pick them for me as I have some years, I would have to pay ten cents a quart, just as I offered you. So, you see, I promised you no more than you will fairly earn."

"How do you pick berries?" asked Alice.

"There's only one way," laughed Grandmother, much amused at the question. "You touch them and off they come! Just pick them off the bushes and drop them in your basket and the thing is done."

"Let's go now," said Mary Jane eagerly.

"Not now," answered Grandmother, "because it's too near dinner time.

Wait till you have your dinner and a little rest of half an hour. Then you can start and pick all afternoon."

By two o'clock the girls had hunted up the berry baskets Grandmother told them to find in the attic (cunning little baskets with long, curving handles they were, too) and, tying on their biggest sun hats, they started out through the garden path.

They crossed the field, climbed the fence into the woods and turned down the wagon road as Grandmother had directed them. And sure enough, there were the berry bushes just as she had said. Bushes that were fairly loaded with shining blackberries that glistened in the afternoon sunshine.