Underneath these was a thick layer of big juicy apples, at the sight of which the children set up a wild shout of joy, for apples were a luxury quite out of their reach under present circumstances, and the only approach to fruit they could get were melons and squashes.
Below the apples came household stores, currants and raisins, packets of tea, coffee, sugar, rice, and beans, a square tin box full of the most delicious cookies, and a great packet of candies, which could only be for the children; then right at the bottom of the box a layer of books, which looked as if they might have been bought from a secondhand bookstall, but that were none the worse for that.
“New books!” cried Grace, her voice almost a shout. “Oh, Bertha, what a winter we shall have!”
“It is the nice things for you that please me most,” said Bertha, in an unsteady tone. “It makes me feel bad to see you trying to eat the rough stuff that the rest of us can enjoy, and now I shall be able to get you nice, dainty things for months to come. But oh, I do wonder who could have sent it? And oh, I wish that he or she could be here to see how delighted we are with it all!”
“So do I,” replied Grace, and then she said, with a merry laugh, “What elaborate precautions the donor took to get his gift here unobserved! Fancy travelling to a lone house like this in the middle of the night for the sake of dumping a box unobserved upon the veranda.”
“And incidentally scaring us all nearly out of our senses. I don’t think that I will ever let myself be scared by a noise in the night again, only, as it happened last night, it was not so much a noise as a sensation,” said Bertha, who sat on the floor surveying the riches contained in the packing case as if she did not know what to make of it all.
“I wonder who could have sent the things? Oh, how I would like to thank them!” said Grace.
“We can’t have all we want in this world, and so I am afraid the knowledge will have to be one of the things that you will have to go without,” Bertha answered, with a laugh, and then, springing to her feet, she began unpacking the things and putting them away.
“Bertha, suppose it is a mistake, and that they are not meant for us,” objected Grace.
“There could not possibly be a mistake that I can see; the things were brought to the house, the case has Mrs. Ellis on it in big letters, and we are going to keep it,” said Bertha decidedly; then she suddenly jerked out, “Don’t you think that perhaps Tom sent it?”