And who do you suppose she met coming up? Aunt
Effie! The real Aunt Effie!
“Well, good morning!” said the real Aunt
Effie smilingly, “who have we here?”
Mary Jane looked long and carefully. She hated
to take other people into her games and then find
out that they laughed at her. And she had learned
by experience that some grown folks never learn the
game of “dress-up.” But Aunt Effie,
the this-morning Aunt Effie, whose eyes looked rested
and smiling, seemed very much as though she might
understand dress-up, very much. Mary Jane decided
to try her.
“I’m Aunt Effie come to visit,”
she said solemnly.
“Now, isn’t that nice,” answered
Aunt Effie and she didn’t seem one bit surprised
or amused or anything that grown folks sometimes are,
“and who am I?”
“Oh, will you play too?” cried Mary Jane
clapping her hands happily.
“To be sure I will,” laughed the real
Aunt Effie, “that’s what I came upstairs
for.”
“Then you come over here by the box and I’ll
dress you up in some little girl things and you can
be Mary Jane,” said the happy little girl.
“Do you like pink or blue sashes?”
Aunt Effie decided for blue and fortunately they found
a nice, long blue ribbon and a white dress of Alice’s
that was just the thing. Such fitting and pinning
and dressing and tying you never saw. And when
it was all done, Aunt Effie looked so much like a
little girl that she couldn’t help but act like
one and she and the “dress-up” auntie played
together all the morning long.
So much fun did they have that mother had to call
twice to make them understand that lunch was ready!
“Here, you show me how you want things put away,
Mary Jane,” said Aunt Effie hastily when they
finally heard. “Let’s scramble them
away so as not to keep mother waiting.”
“We’ll put them right on the top in the
box,” said Mary Jane, “’cause we’ll
want to play some more—lots!”
And they did, many times.
One morning a few days after the dress-up fun Aunt
Effie had to go down town on some errands and Mary
Jane was left to play by herself. She and her
auntie had grown to be such good play fellows that
it was hard to find something interesting to do without
Aunt Effie to join in the fun.
“Why don’t you find something to
do and then do it?” said Mrs. Merrill after
Mary Jane had made pictures on the window pane and
rummaged through the mending basket and poked her
finger into the canary’s cage and fingered the
forbidden little green balls on the ends of the fern
leaves. “Little girls can’t expect
to have a good time when they do all the things they
are not allowed to do. Go and play with Marie
Georgiannamore, you haven’t played with her
since Aunt Effie came.”
“Will you play too?” asked Mary Jane.
“Not for a while yet, dear,” replied mother,
“because this is wash morning and I have a new
laundress to look after. Didn’t you see
her come around the house when we were at breakfast?
I have to go downstairs and show her how we like our
clothes washed and starched. Don’t you want
to go along?”
