That suited Mary Jane exactly; so the thread was cut,
the needle threaded (and that wasn’t nearly
as hard work as Mary Jane had feared it would be,
thanks to the needle’s big eye) and she set to
work.
Such a busy morning as they did have—Mary
Jane and her mother! Mary Jane liked sewing even
better than she had thought she would and she worked
faithfully. So faithfully that by the time the
clock said, “time to get lunch”! the little
girl with the pink sunbonnet was all finished and the
thread was ready to begin the sunflower.
“Ugh!” exclaimed Mary Jane with a big
stretch, “we worked hard, didn’t we, mother?”
“Indeed we did,” laughed Mrs. Merrill,
“and now we’d better hurry down and start
lunch. I see Alice way down at the corner there
and by the way the girls are all talking together—see
them, Mary Jane” (and she pointed down the street
where a parting between the trees allowed them to see
a long way)—“I guess Alice has some
plan to talk about. Luckily we’ll be ready
for her in a jiffy!” And together the sewing
ladies hurried down to the kitchen.
Alice dashed into the house with a flurry of good
spirits.
“Oh, mother,” she exclaimed, “the
girls say that the violets are out and we do want
to have a wild flower hunting picnic up Clearwater!
May we? And may I go?”
Mrs. Merrill dropped her work and looked up at her
big girl in surprise.
“A picnic up Clearwater!” she said.
“Is it warm enough for picnics? Oh”
(as Alice started to exclaim), “I know it is
warm enough if a little girl has been running home
from school—I don’t doubt that it
is! But you must remember that the ground stays
damp a long time in the spring and that a picnic usually
means sitting around on the ground.”
“Well, this wouldn’t be a sitting around
picnic, mother,” said Alice eagerly, “because
we’re going to hunt violets and you can’t
sit around much if you do that.”
“No, that’s true,” laughed Mrs.
Merrill, who very well knew how Alice loved to flower
hunt through the woods. “Who are ‘we’
that you speak of?”
“Oh, Ruth and Marcia and Frances, of course,
and maybe Virginia and Jane,” replied Alice.
“And whose mother is going along?” questioned
Mrs. Merrill, who always liked to get all the information
she could before making a decision.
“The girls all hoped you’d go,
mother,” said Alice, proudly, “because
you’re such good fun at a picnic.”
“Jollier!” teased Mrs. Merrill. “What
would I do with Mary Jane?”
“Why not take her along?” asked Alice.
“She’s getting big now.”
At that, Mary Jane who had been watching and listening
all this time, dropped the napkins she had just taken
out of the drawer and clapped her hands happily.
“Oh, goody, goody, will you really, mother?”
she cried. “I’ve always wanted to
go to one of Alice’s picnics!” Which was
perfectly true. You see, the little group of
girls of which Alice was a member, often had gay picnic
parties and always and always Mary Jane had wanted
to go along. But always and always she had been
told she was too little to walk so far, or too little,
to carry her share of baskets or too little to—something;
so she had had to stay home.
