“My—twin—sister! How queer that is!” mused the watching child.
CHAPTER II
WHERE THE HOUSES ARE SMALL
Mary Jane dropped her crutches on the floor and readjusted the baby. He had a most trying habit of not staying “put,” and sometimes the other children slapped him. Mary Jane never did that. She merely set him up again, gave his cheek a pat or a kiss, and went on about her business.
For, indeed, she was almost the very busiest small body in the world. Besides her own mother’s five other children there were the neighbors’ broods, big and little, with never a soul to mind them save their self-constituted nurse.
That very morning Mrs. Bump had paused in her washing to look up and exclaim:
“I never did see how the little things do take to her! She can do just wonders with them, that she can; and I reckon it was about the best thing ever happened to her, that falling out the top window, like she did. Seemed to knock all the selfishness out of her. Maybe it’s that settled in her poor body. Yes, maybe it’s that, dear heart. Anyhow, her inside’s all right. The rightest there ever was. If this world was just full of Mary Janes, what a grand place it would be!”
Then, after a regretful sigh for this beatific state of things, the mother thrust her strong arms again into the suds, with a splash and a rub-a-dub-dub which told plainly enough from whom Mary Jane inherited her energy.
Just then Mrs. Stebbins thrust her head out of the window, next door, to remark:
“There was fifty-four of them gardens given out. My boy’s goin’ to raise cabbages.”
“You don’t say! Now, ain’t that fine? I wish I had a son to get one, but all my boys is girls, save the baby, and he don’t count. Though he’ll grow, won’t he, mother’s lamb? He’ll grow just as fast as he can and get a playground garden, good’s the next one, so he will, the precious!” chirruped Mrs. Bump, to the year-old heir of the house.