Mary Jane sat down on the big chair and started counting
the boards in the floor. “One, two, three,
six nine seven, ten,” she said to herself patiently.
“Then if nobody can come to see me, I guess I’ll
have to find somebody right in this house. I
wonder—”
What did she wonder?—wait and see.
“You sit right there, Dorothy, and make yourself
at home,” said Mary Jane, “and I’ll
get Marie Georgiannamore for you to play with.”
“What in the world!” exclaimed Mrs. Merrill
to herself as she passed Mary Jane’s door on
the morning after Junior had had his shower bath.
“Who can be there now? I particularly told
Mary Jane not to invite any children in, this week.”
She opened the door and was already to say, “Whose
little girl are you?” as she usually did to
new friends that Mary Jane brought home. But
this time there wasn’t any little girl there!
Only Mary Jane and her dolls and her teddy bears playing
as contentedly as you please.
“Oh!” laughed Mrs. Merrill, much relieved,
“that’s a joke on me, Mary Jane; I thought
you were talking to some new little girl. I didn’t
know that you had named one of your dolls Dorothy.”
“I was talking to a little girl,” answered
Mary Jane solemnly, “and I haven’t changed
the name of one of my dolls—not one.”
“Well, that’s nice,” said Mrs. Merrill,
but she didn’t pay more than half attention
to what Mary Jane said because she just happened to
think of something that she surely must order from
the grocery as soon as she could get downstairs.
“I’m glad you are having such a good time.”
And she kissed her little daughter lightly and went
away.
“You’ll have to excuse her, Dorothy,”
apologized Mary Jane, “grown folks don’t
know much sometimes and I’m sure she didn’t
see you or she’d have asked you to stay for
lunch.” She pulled two chairs over to the
window seat, got out paper and colored pencils and
then sat down in one chair. “Now you make
snow on your paper and I’ll make a picture.”
For some minutes there was quiet in the nursery except
for the sound of Mary Jane’s pencil rubbing,
rubbing on the paper.
“There!” she said at last, “there’s
a cow and two chickens and a strawberry like they
have at my great-grandmother’s that Dr. Smith
told me about. Let’s see your snow,”
she added politely. She picked up the blank piece
of white paper that lay in front of the other chair
and looked at it thoughtfully. “You do
make nice snow, Dorothy,” she said, “it’s
so clean and white. Now let’s go down and
see if lunch is ready.”
When she reached the door of the nursery, she stepped
back to let some one pass out in front of her and
as she went downstairs she was careful to keep well
to one side so that there was plenty of room for some
one to walk beside her. She went through the
empty living room, through the dining room and out
into the kitchen where her mother was working.
