"Of course they are!" she cried, drawing Twaddles into her lap and hugging him. "I suspect Jud is packing the largest he can find into a box now to send us for our pies."
Meg had been upstairs and put on one of her summer white dresses, too short in the skirt and too tight in the sleeves, for Meg, as Mother Blossom had said, was growing very fast.
"You just ought to see the dress Miss Florence is making me, Aunt Polly," Meg said, her blue eyes shining. "It has two tucks in the skirt, and puff sleeves----"
"Well, what about your piece?" asked Father Blossom. "You don't suppose there is any danger that you'll march up on the platform Wednesday afternoon and recite a verse about pink sashes and tucks, do you, instead of Thanksgiving?"
Meg was sure she wouldn't do that, and to prove it, she recited her whole five verses very nicely, and with no mistake.
"She has gestures--Mother showed her how," said Bobby, very proud of his pretty sister. "I don't like to wave my hands, but I like to watch other people do it."
A few days before the all-important Wednesday Miss Florence telephoned--she had a telephone in her house now that she could not go out--and said that Meg's dress was finished. When Bobby and Meg came home from school at noon for lunch, Mother Blossom told them to go around by Miss Florence's house that afternoon and get the frock.
"Dear, dear, if I'm not stupid," fussed Miss Florence, folding the crisp, dainty folds of the dress a few minutes after the children had rung her bell and announced they were to take the package. "Here I've gone and saved this nice box for it, and it hasn't a lid. If I lay sheets of tissue paper over it and pin them carefully, do you think you can carry it?"
"Sure I can," said Bobby. "You don't need a cover, Miss Florence. Come on, Meg."
"Be careful and don't drop it," warned Miss Florence, hobbling on her lame ankle to the door to watch them down the steps. "Isn't it a miserable day out!"
Meg and Bobby didn't think it was a miserable day, though the wind was raw and cold, and the ground, soft from the first freeze, was slippery and muddy. But, as Bobby had once said, they were fond of "just plain weather."
"Oh, dear," wailed Meg when they were half way home, "here comes that mean, disagreeable Tim Roon. He's the hatefulest boy!"