“I can’t sew, so what good would needle and thread do me?” he asked them.
Meg, forgetting the shirt for a moment, asked him what he did when buttons came off his clothes.
“My mother sews them on again,” said Jud, “and Mother darns my socks and Mother mends the rips I get in my coats.”
“There, you see!” Meg cried triumphantly. “This man hasn’t any mother to sew buttons on him.”
“On his shirt, you mean,” giggled Dot.
“Well, maybe he hasn’t,” Bobby admitted. “I don’t suppose he has, or he wouldn’t have to do his own washing. But Linda’s basket is on the other side of the brook.”
“I’m going to take the shirt over to her and ask her to mend it,” announced Meg. “I know she will. Then I’ll bring it back and hang it on the bush and won’t he be surprised!”
Jud chuckled.
“He’ll be more surprised if he comes along and his shirt is missing,” he laughed. “Why, he’ll think the birds made way with it.”