"but it leaks and please may I go back by Doris's and see the ants?"

Mrs. Merrill took the bursting bag and thanked Mary Jane for the errand.
Her mind was on her delayed baking and she thought Mary Jane meant to go to
see Doris's aunt. So, without a question, she replied, "Yes, you may, dear,
but don't stay too long." And so Mary Jane ran back to her ants.

By careful watching she found where they were going. They had a whole
colony of tiny holes out in the grass plot between the sidewalk and the
curbing and they seemed to be moving the sugar into these holes.

"I think I ought to help them, they're such little things," said Mary Jane
to herself, "and I think Doris would want to help them too." She went to
Doris's gate and called and her little friend came out to watch ants too.

"See what they are doing?" explained Mary Jane. "They're moving the sugar
into their pantry and we ought to help them like my father helps me when I
move my doll house things."

But somehow the plan which sounded so well, didn't work. Maybe the ants
didn't understand that help was being given them; for really, the more the
little girls "helped" the more scurrying and confusion there was in that
company of ants. And even when Mary Jane picked up a grain of sugar and
actually dropped it into a hole ready for them to put away, that didn't
seem to be the right thing either!

Just then, when the little girls were getting tired of bending over so long
and trying to do something that didn't work, the noon whistles began to
blow, and, a minute later, Mr. Merrill came riding by in his car.