Six tiny packages, just alike. There were six fifty-dollar bank notes. Each was labelled: “To be kept for Mary Ellen’s wedding-dress.”
Mary Ellen’s mama looked as if she would cry. Papa Dick said, “I wonder what these grandmothers will do next!”
Mary Ellen’s next celebration was on New-Year’s Day. Nothing would do but that the Baby must make New-Year’s calls. Her mama feared she might take cold from “drafts,” being carried in and out of so many rooms, but Papa Dick said, “O, bundle her up!”
So New-Year’s morning Mary Ellen was dressed in her long white cashmere cape-cloak and her white velvet hood, and was carried about the house, up stairs and down, to call on her grandmothers in their own rooms. She was quite equal to the occasion. She said, “Da-da, da-da!” (“Happy New-Year!”) to each and every one who took her mite of a hand, and came home to her crib with something shut fast in her fingers her mama did not see at all!
Ella Farman Pratt.
MAKING NEW-YEAR’S CALLS.
THE HOUSE OF THE GRANDMOTHERS.
CHAPTER IV.—Mary Ellen’s Midnight Adventure.
What it was Mary Ellen had in her soft little pink hand when she came back from the New-Year’s calls and still had in it when she was laid in her “cribsie-nest” New-Year’s night, nobody knew.
