Visiting Cousin Louise
Cousin Louise was close to the train as it stopped, and she helped Mary Jane off and gave her a good welcoming hug as they hurried over to the auto.
“And this is John, my boy,” she said proudly. “John, this is your cousin Mary Jane and this is Alice.”
“You may sit up here with Dad and me,” he said to Mary Jane, “and the others can sit in the back.” Mary Jane saw in a minute that she was going to like John. He might be young but he wasn’t a baby; it was plain that he expected to look after all the lady folks of the party just as he plainly was used to looking after his dainty little mother.
Mary Jane dutifully climbed into the front seat, with a little help from Cousin Louise, and then John played host by explaining to her all about their automobile. Mary Jane didn’t know one thing about an automobile and she was much impressed by the fact that this little cousin whom she had expected to take care of and mother around, knew so very much more than she did. Bui she liked it; she liked his sturdy, frank way and she wished that they could stay longer and get acquainted, really acquainted, with so desirable a cousin.
Shortly, John’s father who had been doing an errand, came back, and after greeting the travelers, started up the car and away they dashed, over the hills and bridges to the little white farmhouse by the mill where John lived.
Mary Jane loved the house from the minute she saw it. It had green blinds and a long front porch; a flower-covered front yard, an interesting looking barn at the side and a rambling kitchen at the back.
“Oh, Mother,” she cried as the car turned in, “do let’s stay a long time! Let’s not go to-night.”
“To-night!” exclaimed Cousin Louise, “surely you didn’t think of going to-night?”
“That’s what I had planned,” said Mrs. Merrill. “You know there is a nine o’clock train to Boston, and I thought that would give us time for a nice visit-y dinner and we have so many plans for to-morrow.”
“Then you’ll just have to change your plans,” said Cousin Louise briskly as she welcomed them into the comfortable old house. “We’ve lots of room and we’ll loan you night things, and you can see what good times my sonny and your girls are going to have.”
“Well, then—” said Mrs. Merrill.
“She’s going to let you stay,” said John. “Come on, let’s go see my lamb.”
He was a bit shy with his new grown-up cousin, Mrs. Merrill, but very comfortable and easy with the two girls.
“Coming along, Dad?” he called to his father as the three children slammed out of the kitchen door.
“Not for a while—got to see what’s the matter with this,” answered his father, who was tinkering with the automobile. “You take the girls through the barn and show them your pets. I’ll join you in the pasture lot after a bit.”
John needed no urging. He ran ahead to open the barn door and let his cousins in on the lower floor where his pet calf—a tiny little brown creature who looked wonderingly at her visitors—stood by her mother in a large roomy stall.
“This barn’s most like grandpa’s,” exclaimed Mary Jane, as the sight and smell of barn things brought back to her mind the joys of the summer she spent visiting her grandparents in the country. “He had an underpart, too, where cows lived sometimes. And a stairs—have you a stairs that’s most like a ladder?”
John had stairs just such as Mary Jane expected and, to tell the truth, he was a bit surprised to find that Mary Jane could run up the steep stairs as fast and as fearlessly as he could. He couldn’t see how a girl who knew nothing about automobiles (when he was so used to them!) could know about anything at all.
On the main floor of the barn the children inspected all the nooks and corners, John explaining and playing host manfully.
“Now let’s go to the pasture lot,” he suggested. “I want to show you sumping there.”
So out to the pasture lot they went, running gayly along the narrow roadway past the garden.
John led them up the hill, over stones and through briars and he wouldn’t stop for anything till the very top by the fence was reached. Once there he looked around as though hunting for something.
“Why—where—?” he said in a puzzled way.
In the meantime Mary Jane stepped up close to the rocky wall bordering the pasture to pick some wild flowers she saw in bloom there. And as she reached into the bushes to pick the flowers, her hand brushed against something furred—and soft—and warm.
“Oh!” she cried drawing her hand back in a jiffy, “it’s alive!”
John pushed into the bushes and there discovered what he was looking for—his best pet of all, his wee lamb. He caught firm hold of the soft wool at the back of the lamb’s neck and pulling hard dragged the shy little creature out for inspection.
“Oh, I didn’t know it was a lamb!” exclaimed Mary Jane happily. “I’m not afraid of a lamb, I’m not. I had a pet lamb too at grandpa’s farm.”
John and Mary Jane sat down on the nearest rock and fell to comparing notes about the lamb she had had and the lamb before them, and so busy were they that they failed to notice the approach of John’s father with a wheelbarrow.
“Anybody want a ride?” he asked. “And Alice, if any big girl like you says she wants one, she’s going to be fooled. But if any people the size of John and Mary Jane want one they’d better get in quick, because mother has just given the signal for dinner and that means come and wash your hands this minute.”
John settled himself in the front of the barrow with his toes hanging over the wheel while his father lifted Mary Jane on just behind. And with Alice for an escort the party went back to the house.
“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.