ce was to sleep in the living-room. When all plans were made, bedding
sorted out and laid ready for making up the beds fresh first thing in the
morning, Mrs. Merrill began planning the meals. If the visitors were to
stay only a short time she wanted to have as much baking and marketing as
possible done beforehand, so every minute could be spent in fun and
visiting. Alice and Mary Jane, who had been marketing so much with their
mother of late that they really could be trusted, took a long list up to
the grocery and Mrs. Merrill set to work baking coffeecake and bread and
cookies. Um-m! It wasn't an hour till that tiny kitchen began to smell so
good that the girls could hardly be coaxed away. Mrs. Merrill let them
help in a good many ways. Mary Jane put the sugar and nuts on the tops of
the cookies after her mother put them in the pan and Alice, who was
getting to be a really good cook, tended to the baking. She put the big
pans in, and watched the baking, and took them out when every cookie was
evenly browned. Then, after she took a pan out of the oven, she gently
lifted the hot cookies out from the baking pan onto a wire rack where they
could cool without losing their pretty shapes. When the cookies were cool,
it was Mary Jane's turn again. She put them all in the tin cookie box,
counting them and laying them neatly between layers of paraffin paper so
they would keep fresh even in the hot weather.

It was a rule that only perfect cookies should be packed away--scraps
never went into the tin box. But for some reason or other, the girls never
seemed to mind the job of eating the broken ones! In fact Mary Jane often
asked Alice _not_ to be so careful--to please break a few so there would
be plenty to eat right then and there.

The day went by so quickly that it was bed time before the girls realized
it and then, after about forty winks, it was morning--the morning when
grandma and grandpa were coming.

Everybody was up early, Alice and Mary Jane made up the beds fresh and
neat, mother cooked a good breakfast and Dadah went to the train, at a
near-by suburban station, to meet the travelers. It was a jolly party that
sat around the breakfast table--you may be sure of that!

"Now then," said Mr. Merrill, when the breakfast was eaten up and news of
the farm had been told, "I'll have to go to work and I suppose grandpa has
to do his business to-day, so we'll leave you folks to yourselves. Then
to-morrow, if grandpa is through