It was large and square, and different in shape from anything that had stood in their house in Norton.

What could it be?
Mark and Ruth asked each other this question a dozen times a day, and, but for their mother's refusal to allow them to do so, would have long since solved the riddle by opening the package.
On Friday night the house was pronounced to be practically water-tight, and at breakfast-time the following morning Mrs.Elmer said they would unpack and arrange the furniture that day.
"And the mystery ?" cried Mark.

"May we open that first ?" "Certainly," replied his mother; "you may, if you wish, open that the moment you have finished breakfast." "That's this very minute, ain't it, Ruth?
Come along.

We'll soon find out what's inside those burlaps," exclaimed the boy, pushing back his chair, and rising from the table as he spoke.
He brought a hammer with which to knock off the rough frame of boards that almost formed a box around the package, and Ruth ran for the shears to cut the stitches of the burlaps.
The frame quickly fell to pieces under Mark's vigorous blows, and then his penknife assisted Ruth's shears.

Beneath the burlaps was a thick layer of straw; then came heavy wrapping-paper, and, under this, layers and wads of news-paper, until the children began to think the whole package was nothing but wrappings.
At last the papers were all pulled away, and there stood revealed, in all its beauty of structure and finish, a little gem of a cabinet organ.