“Is she up there yet, Bob?” asked Grandmother wonderingly.  Then she called, “Mary Jane!  Mary Jane!  Mary Jane!”

“Oh, Grandmother!” replied the little girl, hearing for the first time, “they’re the cunningest!  Do come see!”

“Whatever has the child found!” she exclaimed, but she went up the ladder just the same to make sure Mary Jane was happy.

It wasn’t more than a minute before Grandmother, too, was down in the hay, admiring the little mice till even Mary Jane was satisfied.  “You’re a good one,” she said, “to find such a nice family right away.  This old basket’s been here for years, but that looks like a brand new nest and a brand new family.  You’ll have something to tell your sister about when she comes now, won’t you?”

“And may I take them down to the house?” asked Mary Jane.

“Look behind you and see if you want to,” answered Grandmother.

Mary Jane turned and looked as she was told and she saw, peeping out from behind the hay, the distressed face of mother mouse.  Poor thing!  She was so afraid something terrible was happening to her babies!

“No, I don’t want to,” said Mary Jane promptly.  “I want to keep them right here and come up and see them whenever I want to.”

“That’s best,” agreed Grandmother.  “You come with me and I’ll find you another basket and then you and Bob and I will hunt eggs.”

So that is the way Mary Jane happened to have a pretty, brand new, pink basket for hunting eggs:  and that’s why they were so late getting the eggs that it was almost supper time before they were through.

THE MYSTERIOUS BUNDLES

For three days after Mary Jane came to visit her grandparents, the sun shone bright and warm and the little girl spent all the time out of doors.  She raced around the yard with Bob; she played with the lamb in the wood across the road; she watched her grandfather feed the little pigs; she fed the chickens and hunted eggs.  And, the most fun of all, she watched the baby mice in the dusky, sweet-smelling hay loft.  Till, really, by the time she had had her supper of bread and milk, Mary Jane was ready to tumble into bed and sleep straight through the night without ever a thought of being homesick.

But the minute she awakened on the morning of the fourth day, Mary Jane knew that something was different.  The sun wasn’t shining across her coverlet as it had before; and from the window came the sound of dripping, dripping, dripping rain.  The kind of rain that you love if everybody’s indoors and can stay in and the fire’s going brightly and Mother’s near to talk to.  And also the kind of rain that makes you feel very queer if you know Mother’s hundreds of miles away and you aren’t going to see her for a good many weeks.

Mary Jane felt a queer feeling in her throat.  Suddenly she tossed the covers back, picked up her clothes so quickly she didn’t even stop to see if she had both stockings, and ran into her grandmother’s room.  “I’m not going to cry, so there!” she said to herself hastily.