----------- JULIA'S HAPPY VISITS BY JOSEPHINE LAWRENCE JULIA was five years old when she went visit- ing for the first time. She went to see her cousins, Bobby and Kitty, for a week, and just as soon as the three cousins were acquainted, Bobby and Kitty made a discovery. Julia didn't like to play with other children! Bobby and Kitty always had "half the neigh- borhood" in to play in their yard. Their mother said so. "Julia isn't sociable," complained Kitty sadly. "Why of course she is—only she isn't used to playing with so many children," said Kitty's mother. "You must help her to have a good time." | |
Now across the road from Bobby and Kitty lived a little boy named Harry. He had a birth- day party, soon after Julia came visiting. She went with Kitty and Bobby. Harry's favorite game was Blindman's Buff, and they played that most of the afternoon. He tied a handker- chief over his eyes and he tried to catch the other boys and girls. When he caught Julia she had to wear the handkerchief and try to catch the others. And, do you know, she thought that was a lovely game and she almost cried when the party was over and she had to go home. The next morning Kitty brought out her jump- ing rope and showed Julia how to skip rope. They skipped all the way to the store on an errand and then they skipped across the meadows to the house where Kitty's grandma | |
lived. She gave them milk and cookies and told them she had jumped rope when she was a little girl. Bobby didn't jump rope—he said that was girls' fun—but he loved to roll hoops. He had two hoops and he loaned one to Julia and they rolled those hoops up hill and down for one whole afternoon. Bobby could keep his hoop rolling for a long time without stopping and Julia soon learned to do it, too. "Come out and see the see saw I've made for you," said Bobby one morning. Julia followed him out to the meadow behind the house and there was a large log left from a tree that had been cut down. Bobby put a long plank across this and told Julia to sit down on one end. | |
"Hold fast" he cried, seating himself on the other end of the plank. "Ow!" Julia cried as she felt herself rising in the air. "Ow! Stop it, Bobby! I'll fall off!" But she didn't, and in a few minutes she forgot to be afraid. It was great fun to ride up and down through the air and Julia was sorry when some boy friends of Bobby's came and asked him to play with them. "We're going to have a game of leap frog, down the lane." David Brown, one of the boys, explained. Julia wanted to see them play, so she tagged along and hung over the fence bars while the boys ran and jumped over each other's backs. "You do have more fun, if you all play to- gether," Julia said to Kitty that night. | |
Julia went home when she had stayed a week, but in the fall Bobby and Kitty came to visit her. They arrived on Hallowe'en and Julia had a party that night. They played in the kitchen because water wouldn't hurt the floor and they had to have a tub of water when they ducked for apples. That was the merriest party! Big black cats decorated the kitchen shelf and apples hung on strings roasted near the hearth fire. Bobby had a jack knife and he made the pumpkin lantern. He carved two eyes, a nose and a mouth, and when a candle was lighted and stuck inside it, you should have seen the funny face it made! Bobby and Kitty went to visit Julia's kinder- garten the next day. Since they were visitors, the teacher said they might choose the game they wished the class to play. | |
"Let's play 'Drop the Handkerchief," sug- gested Kitty. Julia liked this game, too, and so did the other children. Bobby started first with the hand- kerchief, but each one had a chance to carry it and drop it behind someone else before the game was ended. When Bobby and Kitty went home, they said that Julia must come again to see them, as soon as the spring flowers blossomed in the woods. It seemed a long time to wait, but at last the winter was over and one day a letter came addressed to Julia. "C-o-m-e h-e-l-p u-s m-a-k-e M-a-y b-a-s- k-e-t-s," Kitty had printed. Julia thought this sounded lovely and as soon as she reached her cousin's house she was ready with a question. | |
"What are May baskets?" she asked. Bobby and Kitty promised to show her. Together they picked enough flowers to fill three pretty baskets. Bobby gave his to his mother, Kitty said she would hang hers on her grandmother's door and Julia took hers to David Brown's house and hung it on his door knob. She knew he was sick and couldn't get out to pick any flowers for himself. "A May basket is a surprise," Julia told the other little girls in her kindergarten," and it is the nicest kind of a surprise, too." | |