“Perhaps you are right, Mary Jane, but you need not get so cross about it. I may be lazy, I suppose, but I do not see what there is about work that makes you like to do it, and in disappointment, even a little one, that makes you glad to bear it.”
“Jenny, I cannot explain. I like to cook and clean and spin and knit. That’s the way I feel. It isn’t hard. I don’t mean to be conceited or think myself better than other people, but somehow when my father is strictest with me something inside of me likes it. Here comes Dorothy with a bunch of pink and white arbutus. It grows late up in the woods. How pretty it is! Our Pilgrim grandmothers must have been glad to see it peeping up from the snow after their long, hard winters. Who is this coming in with the boys? Why, it is your brother John! Jenny, will you and John stay to supper with us?” Mary Jane turned to her friend eagerly.
“Yes, Mary Jane, and I will help you with the dishes and, after supper, John shall tell us stories about his voyage. It is just as well we were disappointed! I will try to be a more dutiful daughter, Mary Jane. I guess Father and Mother like to have me visit you. They chide me for my heedless ways.”
The girls and boys came trooping in together and Mary Jane pushed aside her flax-wheel and stirred the embers on the hearth, laying on fresh sticks. John Lewis met her with awkward shyness and dropping a bulky package on the chair beside her said, “Open it later, Mary Jane. It is for you. I whittled it out in spare minutes aboard the Breezy Belle.”
Jenny called across the room.
“Hurry up, John Lewis, and all of you boys wash while we help Mary Jane dish up the beans. It is supper time, and she has asked you and me to stay. Here is Sam Dodd, Mary Jane.”
“Oh yes, he wants his mother’s beans. They are the ones in the back of the oven, Jenny. Please help him.”
“We shall be glad to help you while your oven is being repaired, Sam. Tell your mother to send in anything she wants to have baked.
“Do open the door for him, John. It would be a pity for him to drop the beans and spoil his mother’s supper.”
So, laughing and hurrying, Mary Jane and her helpers soon had on the table their supper of baked beans and brown bread, custards and cool drinks of milk. After supper, Father asked his family and the company to gather for prayers at once for he had an errand up the road and wished to get back early. The planting and housecleaning days were hard ones and he knew that his folks needed to get to bed in good season if they wanted to do good work the following day.