Mr. Merrill locked the car and then he and Mary Jane went through the station and clear out to the tracks so they might see Aunt Effie the minute she got off the train. Pretty soon the great engine with its long trail of big Pullmans came snorting and puffing into the station; the porters stepped off the cars but not a single passenger appeared—except one small, lonely-looking little woman in black who climbed out of the last car.
"She didn't come!" exclaimed Mary Jane in dismay.
"Yes, she did, and here she is!" laughed father as he stepped up to greet the little lady. "Welcome, Aunt Effie! This is Mary Jane come to meet you!"
Now Mary Jane had never seen her grandmother or any older auntie, at least she hadn't seen them recently enough to remember them because the Merrills lived many miles from all their kith and kin. So she was much puzzled at the little old lady and far too shy to do more than to drop a nice little courtesy as her mother had taught her to do. Then they all climbed into the car and drove home.
Aunt Effie was tired from her long journey so she didn't talk much that evening and Mary Jane went off to bed feeling not one bit acquainted with the auntie she had thought and talked so much about.
"I don't believe she likes little girls," she thought sadly. "I don't believe she even saw me because when grown folks see little girls they always say, 'How old are you, little girl?' and then they say, 'My! my! you're almost big enough to go to school!' and she didn't say a thing to me!" And she went to sleep thinking about how fine it would be to have a really truly "play-with" auntie come to visit.
Aunt Effie hadn't come down to breakfast yet when Mary Jane had finished hers so she started playing all by herself. "I think I'll play dress up to-day," she said to her mother as she slipped down from the table.
"That will be fine," said Mrs. Merrill; "the attic is plenty warm and you can play up there all you like to, only you must remember to put everything away neatly when you have finished playing."
"I will, mother dear," answered Mary Jane and she kissed her mother and started up the stairs.
Now up in the Merrill attic, off in a nice comfortable corner where it wouldn't be in any one's way, was the girls' "dress-up box." In it were kept all the clothes that Alice and Mary Jane were allowed to play with. There were old coats and wonderful old hats that were so queer one would never guess real ladies had worn them! And slippers and hair ribbons and petticoats and shawls and silk dresses and morning dresses and parasols and—oh, the most things you ever saw! Whenever Mrs. Merrill had something that she couldn't use any more and that wasn't worth giving away to some needy person, she put it in the girls' box. And whenever the girls, either Alice with her big girl friends or Mary Jane with her little playmates wanted to dress up or have a show they helped themselves out of the box—it was great fun as you can see. Many a morning when Mary Jane was tired of being Mary Jane, she slipped off to the attic and dressed up to be somebody else.