"I can't sew, so what good would needle and thread do me?" he asked
them.

Meg, forgetting the shirt for a moment, asked him what he did when
buttons came off his clothes.

"My mother sews them on again," said Jud, "and Mother darns my socks
and Mother mends the rips I get in my coats."

"There, you see!" Meg cried triumphantly. "This man hasn't any mother
to sew buttons on him."

"On his shirt, you mean," giggled Dot.

"Well, maybe he hasn't," Bobby admitted. "I don't suppose he has, or
he wouldn't have to do his own washing. But Linda's basket is on the
other side of the brook."

"I'm going to take the shirt over to her and ask her to mend it,"
announced Meg. "I know she will. Then I'll bring it back and hang it
on the bush and won't he be surprised!"

Jud chuckled.

"He'll be more surprised if he comes along and his shirt is missing,"
he laughed. "Why, he'll think the birds made way with it."

This was a new problem for Meg and she thought about it for several
minutes.

"Dot and Twaddles can stay here," she decided, "and if the man comes,
they can tell him that I will bring his shirt back as soon as it is
mended."

But the twins did not take kindly to the idea of being left alone.
They said they were going back when Jud went.

"Then you take the shirt, and I'll stay," said Meg, who seldom gave up
a plan, once she had made it. "Please ask Linda to put the buttons on
and mend the pocket and then you bring it right back."

Jud looked doubtful at the thought of leaving Meg, even when Bobby
declared he would stay with her.

"I have to go, for the children can't get back alone," he said, "but
you mustn't go away from here: I want to be able to find you when I
bring the laundry home."

Bobby and Meg laughed and promised to stay close to the bush. Meg
folded up the shirt and stuffed it in Jud's pocket, because she said
Dot would drop it in the water if she tried to carry it and Twaddles
would want to play with it and might get it dirty. Then Meg and Bobby
watched the three wade back and when they reached the opposite bank,
they waved to them.

Though Jud had said they could not land, there was a narrow strip of
ground firm enough to hold them and it was on this the bush grew where
the unknown man had hung his washing.

"I don't see any house for him to live in," said Bobby curiously.

"Maybe he lives in a tent," Meg answered absently, trying to see
across the brook to the tree where she knew Lind