"I don't know what to think," said Mrs. Merrill, as she sat down between the two little girls to think and plan. "Alice wanted that especial kind of cake for her party but eggs cost so much these days—there were eight whites on that platter, Mary Jane; I don't believe I can afford eight more, really I don't."
"Oh, I can, I can, mother dear!" cried Mary Jane and quick as a flash she ran to her little white dresser. "I can afford it with this and I want to!" She pulled out her precious letter with a dollar bill tucked in its folds—the dollar bill that her great-grandmother had sent her and with which she was to buy something very special for herself—and handed it to her mother. "Please, mother, let her have it with this!"
"Do you realize that this is your very own dollar that you are giving me?" asked Mrs. Merrill, and Doris eyed Mary Jane's wealth with surprised eyes.
"Yes, mother, I know it is mine, mine that I was saving for a big doll, but I don't want to spoil Alice's party, truly I don't! Please let me go buy some more eggs for her cake!"
"I believe you really want to," said Mrs. Merrill, as she slipped her arm around the eager little girl, "and I believe it's the best thing to do. You didn't realize that you were taking something that you had no right to when you took those 'clouds' for the doll house, did you, Mary Jane?"
"'Deed I didn't, mother, and please may we get the eggs now?"
Mrs. Merrill looked at her watch. "There will be just time if you go right away, dear," she said; "come the back way and I'll give you a basket to carry them in so none will be broken. And get eight, that's all you took—I'll buy the yellows from you so you will still have a good deal left from your dollar."
The two little girls skipped down to the grocery in a hurry but they didn't hurry home—no, sir! They walked slowly and carefully so that not an egg was even cracked.
And by the time they got home and gave Amanda the eggs and saw them all opened and divided, the whites on a platter and the yellows in a bowl, the big whistles blew for noon and Doris had to go home.
Mary Jane went with her as far as the gate and then waited under the little mulberry tree till her father came home for his lunch.