“You’ll have to have a new white dress,” decided Mother Blossom. “You’re growing so fast, Meg, that none of your summer dresses will do. I’ll have to call up Miss Florence and see, if you can stop in to be measured to-morrow.”
For cheerful little Miss Florence, who flitted about from house to house making pretty dresses for little girls and their mothers and sisters, had sprained her ankle a day or two before and Doctor Maynard would not hear of her leaving the house for weeks and weeks.
“Lucky it wasn’t my wrist,” Miss Florence had laughed. “I can still sew, if my customers come to me.”
Mother Blossom telephoned that afternoon, and Miss Florence said that she could begin 133 Meg’s new dress early the next week. She would only have to come two or three times to try it on, and then Miss Florence would send word when she or Bobby might come after it. Miss Florence had no one to run errands for her.
What with practicing “pieces,” and being fitted for a new dress, and going to school and playing a little every day, the time fairly flew, and before Meg and Bobby knew it Aunt Polly had come.
“How you’ve grown!” she cried when she saw the four little Blossoms. “Why, I don’t believe Jud would know you if he saw you.” Jud had been a great friend of the children’s when they visited Aunt Polly at Brookside Farm, and they had other friends to ask after, too.
“How’s Carlotta?” demanded Meg eagerly. Carlotta was the calf given to Meg and Bobby as a reward for help they had given one of Aunt Polly’s neighbors.
“Carlotta is growing,” said Aunt Polly, smiling. “And Linda is going to school, which leaves me all alone in the house. I declare I 134 was glad to close it and come down to you, Margaret.”
Aunt Polly was Mother Blossom’s widowed older sister. The children loved her dearly, and now, each with a red apple in hand from the bag Aunt Polly had brought them, they crowded around to ask if she wouldn’t like them to rehearse.
“Rehearse?” asked Aunt Polly, puzzled. “Rehearse what, blessings?”