Part 6

"I love to wash hands at a back door," said Mary Jane enviously as she saw John's father splashing at a pan near the door. "It's so common to wash in a bathroom!"

"Well," laughed Cousin Louise, "I can't say that everybody agrees with you! I know I felt very grand when we had our nice bathroom installed upstairs. But if you'd really _rather_ wash down here, I think John can find you a pan and a towel." Alice went upstairs with her mother and washed in a nice, lady-like fashion, but John and Mary Jane had a beautiful splash-y time at the back doorstep and to judge from their red noses--and the towel--they must have come to the table every bit as clean.

"I could eat just everything," said Mary Jane ravenously, as they sat down to an appetizing-looking dinner.

"Well, you won't get everythin'," giggled John, "but Mother won't let you be hungry, will you, Mother?" he added hospitably.

And with all the good things before her, Mary Jane was sure she _wouldn't_ be hungry--lovely fresh peas, browned potatoes, salad in such a pretty bowl. For the next few minutes the children were too busy to talk, but by dessert time, John was again telling the girls some of the funny things his chickens and lamb could do.

"There now, John," said his mother interrupting, "I forgot the cream for the berries. Can you get it for me from the kitchen table? It's in the blue bowl."

John thought he could and he slipped down from his chair and hurried out to the kitchen. Coming back he didn't hurry for in his hands, held tightly, he carried a large blue bowl filled nearly full with rich looking cream.

"We always have our cream in a pitcher," remarked Mary Jane.

"You couldn't pour this cream out of a pitcher," explained Cousin Louise. "See?" She lifted a spoonful of the cream with a silver ladle and Mary Jane thought she had never seen anything so good looking. It was rich and creamy colored and almost as thick as soft gelatine. Alice was a bit worried lest it be sour, and she hated milk or cream that wasn't every bit sweet. But when the girls tasted it they found it sweet as could be and oh, so good.

"There are the queerest things around Boston," exclaimed Mary Jane as she smeared the thick cream over her berries ready to eat, "there are boats made like swans, and tides like in Florida, and a spring coming out of a pipe--that was in Plymouth--and cream that looks like pudding. Have you got plenty of it, Cousin Louise?" she added as she eyed the blue bowl.

Cousin Louise assured her that there was still plenty in the bowl and a great plenty more in the milk cellar outside so she could eat all she wanted. But to tell the truth, Mary Jane found that one big bowlful of strawberries and such cream was all she could eat, and she was soon ready for the drive that Cousin Louise proposed.

They drove through the marshes that much to the girls' interest proved to be the place where cranberries are grown.

"See?" said John's father as he slowed up the car so they could see the bushes and could, perhaps, imagine the red cranberries with which the low bushes would be loaded after frost. "Next time you eat your Thanksgiving dinner, you just look hard at the cranberry sauce and see if it didn't come from Marshfield."

Mary Jane giggled at his funmaking and promised to ask each cranberry she met during the coming fall.

Turning from the main road, they drove into the heart of a charming wood where Cousin Louise had them get out to see the wild flowers. There the girls saw, for the first time, the beautiful and very rare wild lady slipper which Alice thought was the loveliest wild flower she had ever seen. They didn't pick a single blossom as the flower is so rare that flower lovers will not take a single bloom from its home in the woods; but they looked at it so admiringly and so carefully that the girls were sure they never, never would forget its beauty.

Back into the car and around a couple of low hills they saw before them--the ocean--golden and blue and rosy as the varying lights of sunset were reflected in it.

"Oh," cried Mary Jane, "are we going swimming?"

"Not this late in the evening, I'm afraid, my dear," said Cousin Louise. "But perhaps mother will let you go in wading. We always carry towels in the back of the car for a good foot rub afterward." Mrs. Merrill approved, so the three children pulled off shoes and stockings and a minute later were dashing down toward the water leaving the grown-ups for a quiet visit near the car.

"Oh, look at the white stones!" exclaimed Mary Jane, as they wandered around on the beach after the first hilarious fun of wading. "I'm going to put some in my pocket. There's one. There's another. See, John, aren't they pretty?"

John agreed and was so diligent in helping to pick them up and so generous in handing over all he could find to Mary Jane, that by the time the children were called to come and dry their feet, Mary Jane's pockets were loaded down and Alice's were full of the overflow.

"I think they'll charge excess baggage for you, young lady," laughed John's father as he lifted Mary Jane into her place by John. "You're not going to take all those stones back to Chicago, are you?"

"Well," began Mary Jane, and then she saw how impossible it would be to carry so many so she decided, "I'm going to take two, the roundest, whitest two, and I'm going to leave the others for John. You'll like 'em, won't you, John?"

John hadn't an idea what he would do with stones but he was always glad to acquire valuable possessions, so he answered, "You bet!" most vigorously, and Mary Jane was happy.

Back at the house, John rushed upstairs ahead of the girls and they couldn't imagine the reason for his hurry--children don't usually like to go to bed in a rush like that, at least the Merrill girls didn't.

But when, a few minutes later, they leisurely went up, they found the reason for his hurry. He met them at the top of the stairs and offered to each girl a pair of his own pajamas! He remembered that his mother had promised night things and he wanted to be a good host. The girls looked with dismay at the cunning little blue pajamas offered them, but their mother came to their rescue.

"Thank you so much, John," she said to the little boy, "you certainly were nice to plan for the girls. Now, don't you want to show us your room? You know you promised you would." And John, carelessly handing over the pajamas, hurried off to display the room of which he was so proud.

A few minutes later the tired little fellow was sound asleep, and then Cousin Louise brought her guests a supply of night things that made them very comfortable.

"I wish I didn't have to go to bed," sighed Mary Jane as she trailed the length of her cousin's pretty gown over the floor. "I think it's horrid when you have a big lady's nighty and it's so long and pretty and like a court dress that then you just have to go to bed and sleep!"

"Well, if you don't go to bed pretty soon," laughed Cousin Louise, "you'll hear my alarm clock and John's roosters before you get to sleep."

But there was no real danger of that because Mary Jane was so tired that the minute her head touched the pillow she was sound asleep and dreaming of white stones that perched up on top of Plymouth Rock and of a dear woolly lamb that came over in the Mayflower.

*THE WILLOW TREE COTTAGE*

Mary Jane thought she never could wake up the next morning. She heard her mother and Cousin Louise talking in the next room, she heard John calling, "Mary Jane! Mary Jane! When you coming to breakfast?" But she simply couldn't make herself wake up and answer. She dozed off again and again, she was so very sleepy.

Finally she heard Cousin Louise say, "Your mother says you must get up, dear, so if you'll jump into the bath that is all ready for you, I'll have breakfast waiting when you come back." Mary Jane heard John and Alice laughing and playing under her window, so she hopped out of bed in a hurry and ran in to take her bath.

When she came back, she found that Cousin Louise had pulled a little table up to the window overlooking the garden and barnyard, and that on the table was spread out the nicest breakfast any girl could ask for.

"There now," said Cousin Louise as she laid a bathrobe around her little guest, "while you eat we're going to visit, because when there are so many other folks around, we don't get a chance to say a word." Mary Jane liked that breakfast ever so much. She told Cousin Louise all about Class Day and the game and the lobster salad and commencement and dancing with one of Uncle Hal's grown-up friends and the shoes that slipped up and down and made a blister--and everything. And as she talked she ate and ate--till all the fresh strawberries and all the egg and potatoes and coffee cake and milk and cereal that Cousin Louise had carried upstairs on the tray had vanished.

"Well," laughed Cousin Louise, "see how stupid I sit here without getting you one single bit of breakfast!" And she laughed at the tray of empty dishes.

"Never mind about any breakfast," replied Mary Jane continuing the joke, "I don't somehow seem hungry for anything this morning Anything _more_ you might say!"

"Then you slip into your clothes as fast as ever you can," said Cousin Louise, "and run out to the barn. John's been watching his favorite hens since he first got up in hopes there would be eggs for you to gather before train time."

It didn't take Mary Jane long to dress and as Mrs. Merrill came in just at the right time to brush her hair and put on her hair bow, she was soon out in the barn lot with Alice and John.

With diligent hunting the three children discovered four eggs by the time that John's father called to them that it was time to go to the train.

"You take 'em with you in your pocket," said John hospitably giving his little cousin all four eggs. "You take 'em 'cause they're good and I'll let you have 'em."

Mary Jane took them gratefully. She had never been particularly fond of eggs but John's eggs, like grandpa's eggs, tasted awfully good and she was quite willing to carry four home. She promised faithfully to carry them all the way to Chicago so her father could taste one. "That'll make one for each of us, 'cause there's four of us," she told John as she put the fourth one in her second pocket.

But when the children got back to the house Mrs. Merrill inquired into the cause of the bulging pockets and out came the eggs--to stay in Marshfield.

"Why Mary Jane," said her mother, "you've stones, all those white stones you gathered on the beach last night, you know, and stones and eggs don't mix very well, you'd find. Then we're going 'way up to Rye Beach for Sunday, and you'll have lots to carry as it is. And there's no use taking the eggs away from John just to run the risk of breaking them, is there?"

Mary Jane agreed that there was no use of that. And with John's promise that next time she came she could have four eggs--not necessarily these same eggs however--for her very own, she was satisfied to put the eggs in the ice-box and wash her hands ready to go to the train.

The little cousins hated to leave each other; they were just getting well acquainted and were planning all sorts of fun they could do together. But Mrs. Merrill thought that Mary Jane, and Alice too, had had such a very busy week that they had better have a very quiet week-end. So as Uncle Hal had friends outside of Boston he wanted to see before leaving for his home in the middle west, it was decided that Mrs. Merrill and the girls go up to a quiet little hotel at Rye Beach and spend Sunday resting and loafing, and that they meet in Boston again on Monday to finish up the sightseeing and visiting.

"You come and see me again," shouted John, as the girls climbed aboard their train half an hour later. "Don't you forget to come to see me and get your eggs!"

"I won't forget," called back Mary Jane, and then, much to the surprise of the brakeman who was giving the signal to go ahead, she stepped half down the steps of her car and shouted back to John, "Next time I come I'm going to stay all day and get a lot of eggs--all the eggs you've got!" Then she hurried into the car to wave to John out of the window as the train moved away.

It was a very dusty morning, as there hadn't been rain for more than two weeks; so Mrs. Merrill shut the window by which they sat. Mary Jane liked that, for then she had a window sill where she could spread out her precious stones without danger of losing any out of the window.

"Now that's the father stone," she whispered to herself, as she hunted out the biggest stone and put it in the left hand corner of the sill, "and that's the mother stone," she added as she chose the next biggest, a round white stone that was her favorite, "and this is the big sister stone and this the big brother stone and here's all the little stones." She pulled them out of her pocket, every one and made a long row of stone children that filled the whole window sill.

"I guess I'll call them Mr. and Mrs. Stone," she laughed softly to herself, and then I'll name the Stone children. "You're Patricia," she announced to the biggest stone sister, "and you're William Stone and you're Edward and you're Margaret and you're Ellen and you're--you're--dear me! How in the world do people name their families? I should think it would be hard work! I should think it would be as hard as naming rivers."

The thought of rivers made Mary Jane remember that she was thirsty, so, with her mother's permission, she went up to the front end of the car where the case of paper drinking cups and the water fountain was. The drinking cup case didn't work very well, and Alice had to come and give her assistance before two cups were dropped out of the slot so that the little girls could get a cool drink. Then Boston was so near that Mary Jane had time only to pick up her Stone family and stow them safely in her pocket--and it was time to get off. There hadn't been a minute to wonder what she would do--the time just went that quickly.

They took a taxi up to their hotel, packed bags with things they would need for over Sunday, ate a bit of lunch and hurried back to the station to catch the train for Rye Beach.

"Did you ever see so many pretty flowers!" exclaimed Alice as their train went past station after station made beautiful with flowers--late irises, early roses, bridal wreath and snowballs, to say nothing of the gay geraniums in formal beds along by the tracks. "Wouldn't you love to have somebody say, 'just pick all you want to, Alice Merrill?'"

"We wouldn't have time to pick 'em, 'cause the train doesn't stop; it's taking us to Rye Beach where Mother went a long time ago. Tell us about it, Mother dear," Mary Jane added. So Mrs. Merrill snuggled the tired little girl close up and told her about the time she and her brothers went to Rye Beach so long ago and how they all went in bathing in the surf when the whistle blew the temperature of the water; and what good things they had to eat at the Willow Tree Cottage and how--but there wasn't any use talking any more, for Mary Jane was fast asleep.

Mrs. Merrill glanced over at Alice who was reading a favorite book Cousin Louise had given her, then she too picked up a magazine and read as the train sped northward toward New Hampshire.

It was a good thing Mary Jane had a long nap that afternoon, for when they got off at their station they found they were still a long way from Willow Tree Cottage and that there was a lot to see on the way. Several passengers got off, and the bus which met the train was filled to the last seat.

First they drove along by some pretty golf links where many folks were enjoying an afternoon game; then they turned into a handsome big hotel. Mary Jane saw children running up and down the broad verandas and caught a glimpse of the ocean through the trees.

"I'd like that place to live," she said to herself, "I wonder if that's where we're going?" But it wasn't.

Next they drove down a street where there were many private houses, in front of some of which the bus stopped to drop passengers. Mary Jane saw children playing in the grassy yards and everything looking so homelike and restful that she couldn't help but think, "I wonder if that's where we're going. I'd like to have that our place." But it wasn't.

Then they drove around a corner with a flourish that almost sent Mary Jane from her seat and out through the opposite window, and drove up in front of a grand-looking hotel right close to the ocean. Folks in pretty light dresses were walking on the broad porches. Children were playing in the great sand-pile out under the trees, and young folks were having a croquet match over near the beach.

"Now that must be where we're going," thought Mary Jane. But it wasn't.

At last, when everyone but Mary Jane and her mother and sister were out of the bus, the driver whipped up his horses and drove away down the beach and then turned down a short road and stopped in front of a rambling, old New England farmhouse. It was painted white, with green shutters; the porch had comfortable chairs enough for a big, big family and rambled around the front and sides of the house as though it was in search of the kitchen door. But out in front, close by where the bus stopped, was the most interesting sight of all--a great willow tree. It had half a dozen trunks all grown partly together and each big enough to make a tree of itself; it had wide spreading branches that arched over the roadway, over the house and over a wide, grassy yard. And under the tree, just past the porch steps was a swing, a big sand pile and a small merry-go-round and a slide place so that little folks who slid down it would tumble gently into the clean white sand.

Was Mary Jane glad that they hadn't stopped at the other places? You should have seen her happy face!

"Oh, Mother," she cried, "let's not just stay here over Sunday! Let's send for Daddah and stay and stay and stay 'cause I know I'm going to have a good time here."

But before Mrs. Merrill had time to answer, Mrs. Bryan, the hospitable lady who owned the cottage, came out to greet them and to say to Mary Jane, "Oh, my dear! I'm so glad you're here! Because I have the nicest surprise for you! Come right into the house and see. I know you'll like it because it's just what your mother and your Uncle Hal always liked to see."

And Mary Jane, followed by Alice, both wondering what in the world the surprise might be, hurried out of the bus and into the house.

*LOST! ONE MARY JANE*

"Can we see it right away?" asked Mary Jane as she hesitated by the newel post at the front stairs. (It was a lovely long, straight stairway with a white banister made of dainty white spindles and a mahogany railing wide and shining on top--just exactly the right sort of a banister for sliding down, and Mary Jane resolved to take a trial slide the first time she could get the hallway to herself!)

"If it's what I think it is," said Mrs. Merrill, looking laughingly at Mrs. Bryan, "you'd better run upstairs and wash off the stains of your journey before you go to see it, because once you get out in the kitchen with Mrs. Bryan you won't want to bother with washing and combing. Is it what I think?" she added.

"Pretty likely!" laughed Mrs. Bryan, "you're not forgetting so easily what you always liked to see. So do as your mother says, Mary Jane," she added kindly to the little girl, "and as soon as she says you may, come out through that door over there and you'll find me."

Alice dashed up the stairs, with Mary Jane close at her heels, and in a very short time they were down again with clean hands and faces and fresh frocks and hair ribbons. Out through the door they went, through the dining-room and into a great, roomy kitchen about as different from their own little apartment kitchen as one could imagine. It had a big pastry table in the middle; two huge stoves at one side and a long sink and several tables on another side. Big windows looked out on a grassy yard.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mary Jane rapturously, "I'd just love to live at your house, Mrs. Bryan. Would you let me beat eggs and fix the edges of pies and wipe dishes?"

"And the cupboards!" exclaimed Alice no less pleased, "would you look at these cupboards, Mary Jane! Wouldn't you just adore getting out sugar and spice and putting dishes away?"

"Well," replied Mrs. Bryan, half puzzled but very much pleased with their enthusiasm, "you're not much like most of the children who come here. Mostly they don't know or care what a kitchen looks like or where it is! I can't think what their mothers mean either, because a house without a kitchen is just nothing. And as for offering to help with dishes--" The good lady broke off in amazement at the unusual occurrence of two boarders offering assistance because they _wanted_ to.

"Was this the surprise and may I look in that cupboard?" asked Alice as she spied a stack of pretty blue and white dishes--just the kind she had always wanted for her own--behind a half open cupboard door.

"Mercy no!" laughed Mrs. Bryan, "this isn't the surprise. But goodness knows you may look in any cupboard you like, dearie; I know you won't do any harm because you like things too well. The surprise is out here."

The girls followed her through a long pantry, the walls of which were covered with cupboards and shelves clear up to the high ceiling, through a summer kitchen where maids were working at preparations for supper, and out into a half dim shed, the floor of which felt soft under their feet because it was covered with thousands of tiny chips of wood, left from the chopping of wood for the big kitchen range.

"There," she said, pointing to two great tubs near the outside door, "that's what your mother and your uncles used to like to see when they used to come here. Have 'em every Saturday evening--just that many," she added as she pointed to the baskets, "and it's time they went into the pot this very minute."

"But what _are_ they?" asked Alice while Mary Jane just stared at the queer sight.

Two heavily woven split baskets, bigger than bushel baskets, considerably, were filled with brownish, greenish things that seemed to move--but of course they _couldn't_--but they _did_, they surely _did_. Moved slowly but crawlingly like great spiders--

"Ugh!" shivered Mary Jane, "whatever are they?"

"You've a good catch this time, haven't you?" Mrs. Merrill's voice behind her reassured Mary Jane. Her mother had followed them out and surely if her mother didn't mind those queer things, they must be all right for she well knew her mother didn't like spiders any better than she did!

"But what _are_ they?" insisted Alice wonderingly.

"Don't you know," laughed Mrs. Bryan, "they're lobsters. Sam caught 'em just to-day and a fine lot they are too. Do you like lobsters?"

"Um-m," replied Alice, "do I? You just try me! But all the lobsters I ever ate were red, bright red."

"Sure enough," laughed Mrs. Bryan as she bustled about a great iron pot in a corner, "and all you ever will eat will be, I hope, because they'll be cooked. The cooking makes 'em red. These are alive."

"But if they're alive you can't cook 'em!" exclaimed Mary Jane in great excitement.

"Oh, yes we can," replied Mrs. Bryan comfortably, "just that easily. We have the water boiling hot and dump 'em in--just that quick and they never know what happens to 'em. Now you can go out this door," she added, "because we've got to hurry now with supper. But don't you go far, for pretty soon you'll hear a gong and that means 'come to supper!' and you come first thing because I know you must be hungry."

Mary Jane and Alice needed no urging--they were hungry, for it had been a long time since breakfast at Cousin Louise's, and their hurried luncheon in Boston wasn't much to remember.