“‘Grandpa finds quite unexpectedly that he must come to Chicago on business and he says that if it’s convenient to you folks I can come along and we’ll stay two or three days for a visit. Please wire reply because we must start Wednesday evening.’”
“And it’s ten o’clock Wednesday morning now!” exclaimed Mrs. Merrill. She hurried to the telephone, called Mr. Merrill so he could send a telegram at once, then she and the two girls went right to work making ready for the guests.
It was decided that Alice and Mary Jane should sleep on couches and give up their room to the visitors. “Now’s when I wish we had our nice guest room,” said Mrs. Merrill, “but then, grandma knows that folks who live in Chicago flats don’t keep guest rooms for infrequent visitors.” For her part, Mary Jane thought sleeping on a couch would be great fun—so grown up and different from every day. She was to have the dining-room couch and Alice was to sleep in the living-room. When all plans were made, bedding sorted out and laid ready for making up the beds fresh first thing in the morning, Mrs. Merrill began planning the meals. If the visitors were to stay only a short time she wanted to have as much baking and marketing as possible done beforehand, so every minute could be spent in fun and visiting. Alice and Mary Jane, who had been marketing so much with their mother of late that they really could be trusted, took a long list up to the grocery and Mrs. Merrill set to work baking coffeecake and bread and cookies. Um-m! It wasn’t an hour till that tiny kitchen began to smell so good that the girls could hardly be coaxed away. Mrs. Merrill let them help in a good many ways. Mary Jane put the sugar and nuts on the tops of the cookies after her mother put them in the pan and Alice, who was getting to be a really good cook, tended to the baking. She put the big pans in, and watched the baking, and took them out when every cookie was evenly browned. Then, after she took a pan out of the oven, she gently lifted the hot cookies out from the baking pan onto a wire rack where they could cool without losing their pretty shapes. When the cookies were cool, it was Mary Jane’s turn again. She put them all in the tin cookie box, counting them and laying them neatly between layers of paraffin paper so they would keep fresh even in the hot weather.
It was a rule that only perfect cookies should be packed away—scraps never went into the tin box. But for some reason or other, the girls never seemed to mind the job of eating the broken ones! In fact Mary Jane often asked Alice not to be so careful—to please break a few so there would be plenty to eat right then and there.
The day went by so quickly that it was bed time before the girls realized it and then, after about forty winks, it was morning—the morning when grandma and grandpa were coming.
Everybody was up early, Alice and Mary Jane made up the beds fresh and neat, mother cooked a good breakfast and Dadah went to the train, at a near-by suburban station, to meet the travelers. It was a jolly party that sat around the breakfast table—you may be sure of that!
“Now then,” said Mr. Merrill, when the breakfast was eaten up and news of the farm had been told, “I’ll have to go to work and I suppose grandpa has to do his business to-day, so we’ll leave you folks to yourselves. Then to-morrow, if grandpa is through his business, we can plan some fun.”
So the two business folks went down town and grandma was left to enjoy life at home. The girls were glad she could stay.
“Let’s take grandma over to the lake,” suggested Alice, “I know you’d love riding in one of those little electric launches, grandmother.”
“Let’s take some lunch and not come home till she’s seen everything in Chicago,” said Mary Jane in a rush of hospitality.