THE MYSTERIOUS BUNDLES
For three days after Mary Jane came to visit her grandparents, the sun shone bright and warm and the little girl spent all the time out of doors. She raced around the yard with Bob; she played with the lamb in the wood across the road; she watched her grandfather feed the little pigs; she fed the chickens and hunted eggs. And, the most fun of all, she watched the baby mice in the dusky, sweet-smelling hay loft. Till, really, by the time she had had her supper of bread and milk, Mary Jane was ready to tumble into bed and sleep straight through the night without ever a thought of being homesick.
But the minute she awakened on the morning of the fourth day, Mary Jane knew that something was different. The sun wasn't shining across her coverlet as it had before; and from the window came the sound of dripping, dripping, dripping rain. The kind of rain that you love if everybody's indoors and can stay in and the fire's going brightly and Mother's near to talk to. And also the kind of rain that makes you feel very queer if you know Mother's hundreds of miles away and you aren't going to see her for a good many weeks.
Mary Jane felt a queer feeling in her throat. Suddenly she tossed the covers back, picked up her clothes so quickly she didn't even stop to see if she had both stockings, and ran into her grandmother's room. "I'm not going to cry, so there!" she said to herself hastily.
"Well, good morning," said Grandmother cheerfully. "That's nice to dress in here! I was just wishing I had company."
"Does rain make you feel like you wanted somebody right close?" asked Mary Jane.
"Every time," agreed Grandmother. "And sometimes, when your grandfather's working out in the barn, and Bob's out 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 it for the minute. "I don't know what it's got inside."
"We'll see," said Grandmother, and she read on the outside, "'I wish I had more.'"
"That's funny," said Mary Jane, "more what?"
"Wait and see," replied Grandmother, and Mary Jane noticed that her eyes twinkled. "She needn't have worried, I have plenty." And she undid the bundle.
"Why! Why—how funny!" exclaimed Mary Jane when she saw what the bundle contained. "That isn't anything! Why did Mother send those? They're just scraps."
"Not scraps, dear," said Grandmother, and, much to Mary Jane's surprise, she seemed very pleased, "pieces. They're pieces for a quilt. Your mother always was crazy about my quilts."
"But those aren't quilts," insisted Mary Jane. "Those are just rolls out of the scrap bag—I've seen them there. That's a piece of my rompers," she added, pointing to a roll of blue, "and that's my best pink gingham, and that's Alice's new school dress."
"So much the better," laughed Grandmother. "When you know what things are from, your quilt is more interesting. Let's put these on the bed while you come with me to the linen room and see what a quilt is."
They went down the hall to a queer little room that had shelves from the floor to the ceiling and on every shelf was bedding of some sort. Grandmother took down a quilt from the middle shelf and spread it out on the floor. "There, Mary Jane," she said, "look at that! There's a piece of your mother's first short dress and a piece of her mother's graduating dress—that pink sprigged scrap; and that's your Uncle Tom's shirt waist; and—well, don't you see? There they are; all the 'scraps' as you call them cut into pieces and made into a quilt. I've always promised that your mother should have this some day. I think I'll have to send it to her now if she's raising a girl who don't know what a quilt is!"
Mary Jane got down on her hands and knees and looked at each piece. "Oh, I know now!" she suddenly exclaimed, "I remember! Mother made one for her doll bed when she was a little girl and it had a piece like this with a red horse shoe in it."
"To be sure," said Grandmother much pleased. "Did she show it to you?"
"Yes, only I disremembered for a while," said Mary Jane solemnly. "She showed it to me the day we sewed. She made it when she was a little girl about as old as me, maybe, because they didn't have nice sewing cards then."
"Yes, she made it when she was visiting me, one summer, just as you are here now," said Grandmother thoughtfully.
"Oh, Grandmother," cried Mary Jane suddenly, and she was so excited she sat up straight and tall, "I'll tell you what let's do to-day!"
"Well," said Grandmother, kindly.
"Let's me make a quilt."
"Fine!" said Grandmother, "only you know you can't make it all in one day—it takes a long time to make a quilt, a good quilt."
"Let's begin it then," said Mary Jane, "and let's make it all pretty like this."
"I'll put this away," replied Grandmother, "and then I'll get my piece bag and see what I have that goes well with what your mother sent. Then we'll make a pattern and cut our pieces—you see, there's a lot to quilt-making before the sewing begins."
[Illustration: "We'll make a pattern and cut out our pieces—there's a lot to quilt-making.">[
"Goody!" cried Mary Jane happily, "I know I'm going to like it all!"
And she did.
She liked the hunting out pretty pieces and cutting them out (yes, she did some of that herself, cutting carefully by the little pattern Grandmother made for her) and counting them and pinning them together: four blues with five pink, or four figured with five plain; everything was four and five.
Then, when material was ready for seven blocks, Grandmother said they had done enough cutting for one day. So they gathered up the pinned together blocks and went downstairs to the cozy sitting-room and sewed the rest of the morning. And while they sewed Grandmother told stories about when Mary Jane's mother was a little girl and came to visit.
Right in the middle of a fine story, Grandfather came into the room and asked, "Isn't there going to be any dinner to-day?" And sure enough it was five minutes to twelve o'clock!
Grandmother jumped up and hurried to the kitchen and Grandfather said, "Well, isn't it too bad it's a rainy day?"
"Rainy?" exclaimed Mary Jane, for she'd forgotten all about the rain and her lonesomeness of the early morning. "Rainy? Why, Grandfather! Rainy days are the best days of all when they're days at Grandmother's house!"