“EARLY to bed, early to rise, and you can catch the first train in the morning,” said Mr. Merrill as they came in from a little stroll through the gayly lighted park that same evening. “And I really think that you folks better forget about me for a few days and go on with your sightseeing by yourselves. The first train for St. Augustine leaves at nine in the morning and you can have lots more fun there than here where everything is more citified.”

“But, Dadah,” said Mary Jane, “will there be flowers there and warm weather and everything just the same?”

“Not a thing the same,” replied Mr. Merrill teasingly; “there’ll be more flowers and more warm weather and more palm trees and more fun for girls and lots more chance to play.”

“Then let’s go and you come as soon as you get through your business, Dadah,” said Mary Jane.

So after an early breakfast and a brisk walk through the interesting markets, Mrs. Merrill, Alice and Mary Jane got aboard the fine “Special” train that went down the east coast.

The very first stop, some two hours later, was their station, and the minute Mary Jane got off she felt a pang of disappointment. All there was to see was a row of funny busses, a narrow parkway of flowers and palms and then fields—just plains, fields or vacant lots and not an interesting thing anywhere. But a ride of a mile in one of the busses made a change. They came to the little town of St. Augustine (“It doesn’t grow near the railroad, this town doesn’t,” Mary Jane afterwards explained to her father, “because railroads are so very now-a-days!”) and that was quaint and pretty enough to delight any little girl.

After they had taken their bags to their big, sunny room, changed their traveling clothes for cool, summer dresses, low shoes and parasols, they went down to inspect their new home. It seemed like moving into fairyland—living in that hotel did—and Mary Jane had to pinch herself three or four times to make sure that she, really truly she was to live in that beautiful place for several days. There were gardens, oh, beautiful gardens full of gay flowers, and brooks and bridges right in the garden—inside the house! And on the bridge in the center of the garden, stood a little girl just about Mary Jane’s age—a little girl who looked all the world as though she would like a playmate.

“May I go and talk to her now?” asked Mary Jane. “Perhaps we’d better have lunch first,” suggested Mrs. Merrill, glancing at her watch. “Who’d have guessed it was nearly one o’clock!”

“I could have guessed that as easy as pie,” said Alice, “because I’m starved.”

“You won’t be long,” said Mrs. Merrill, laughingly, “because you’ll find lots to eat here.” And they went toward the dining room.

“Now where would you like to sit?” asked the pompous head waiter as he escorted Mary Jane, who happened to be leading her family, to a seat.

“If you’d just as soon,” replied Mary Jane politely, “I’d like to sit at the table where there’s the most to eat. And Alice would like to sit there too, ’cause she’s always just as hungry as I am. And mother’ll have to sit there if we do ’cause she belongs to us.”

“Then this is the very place for you,” said the head waiter, as with twinkling eyes he pulled out three chairs at a cosy window table. “These little girls,” he added to their waiter, “are to have all they can eat whether it’s early or late.”

“I think we’re going to like this place, Mother,” said Mary Jane happily, as she unfolded her napkin, while the waiter went to get their menu cards, “’cause they seem to like us.”

They had a royal luncheon, ending with two kinds of ice cream and a promise from the waiter of another still different sort for evening dinner.

After luncheon they took a little walk through the “square,” enjoying the gay shops and the curious houses and trees.

“Isn’t this the place where the ‘Fountain of Youth’ is?” said Alice as she looked up from a window full of pictures. “That looks like the picture of it in my geography.”

“Oh, I know all about the Fountain of Youth!” exclaimed Mary Jane happily. “Miss Lynn told us about it in kindergarten. Is this it?”

“Not right here,” replied Mrs. Merrill, “but only a mile or two outside the city. Suppose we hail one of those pretty little surreys and ride out there. I know you girls will like that and I love riding in those little fringed surreys—they make me feel so gay.”

A few steps farther on they came across an empty surrey, driven by a man who was plainly of Spanish descent and who seemed very glad to have passengers who would like to hear his stories of the founding of the little town.

Before they drove out to the “Fountain of Youth,” he took them through a few of the little streets of the town and told them stories about the houses and stores they passed. Then they turned northward and drove past the city gates, the forts and the old cemetery toward the spring the girls were so anxious to see. “But, Mother!” exclaimed Alice, as they drew up in front of a rather dilapidated, low building, “this isn’t it! I know what it looks like from the picture and it’s nothing like this.”

“This is the ‘Fountain of Youth’ all the same,” answered Mrs. Merrill. “Those pictures that are used so much were taken years ago when there was an open pavilion over the spring. In recent years it has been housed in as you see it now. You won’t be disappointed with the inside though—it’s as curious and interesting as ever. Come in and get a drink.”

Mary Jane and Alice followed her down three narrow steps, through a low doorway and into a dim room. At first they couldn’t see anything interesting but as they looked about longer they changed their minds. Bubbling out of the ground, almost at their feet, was a little spring—the very same spring that the Spaniard, Ponce de Leon, had discovered over three hundred years ago.

“But, Mother,” objected Mary Jane, “couldn’t he see that this was just a common, every-day spring and that it was just so ordinary this way?”

“Oh, it didn’t look ordinary to him, you may be sure,” said Mrs. Merrill. “You must remember that he had landed after a long, long sea voyage and fresh water, bubbling from the ground, looked more than usually good. Then all this place where we are standing was a forest of bloom—thousands of flowers he had never before seen were here and it must have looked very lovely and magical to him.”

“Yes, that would make a difference,” admitted Alice.

“Then, too,” continued Mrs. Merrill, “even before he came here, the Indians had a legend that this was a magic well and he who drank thereof would never die. That, I think, is because it is a mineral spring and the water tastes different from most spring water. Try it yourselves and see.” And then as the girls filled their cups she added, “So you can hardly blame the stranger if he thought he had found the spring of youth he had set out to locate, can you?”

The girls made faces over the water—they didn’t like the taste a bit. “I know why he called it the ‘Fountain of Youth,’” laughed Alice as she tried to finish her cupful. “He had to call it something interesting or folks would never drink it!”

“What are those stone paths?” asked Mary Jane as she set her cup down.

“Those aren’t paths, little girls,” said the guide who had stood near by. “Those stones make a cross—but such a big cross you hardly notice it at first. See! There are fifteen stones for one part and thirteen for the other. We are told that Ponce de Leon himself laid those here to mark the year he discovered the spring; that was in fifteen-thirteen.”

As they went out from the dimness of the spring house into the warm sunshine, who should they see coming toward them but the little girl Mary Jane had seen that morning on the bridge in the hotel gardens. Mary Jane hung back a minute to speak to her.

“I’m Mary Jane and you live in my house,” she said by way of introduction.

“No,” replied the little girl half shyly; “you live in mine because I lived here first. I’m Ellen. Are you tired?”

“No-o!” answered Mary Jane positively; “what is there to be tired about?”

“It’s such a long way out here,” said Ellen.

Ellen’s mother came up just then and seeing her little girl speaking to the newcomers she added, “We tried to walk out here and I should have known better because it’s much too far for Ellen. But she’ll have to be a brave girl because there’s no other way to get back.”

“There is if you don’t mind being crowded a bit,” suggested Mrs. Merrill hospitably. “We three can sit on the back seat and you and Ellen can sit in front with the driver. We’re just ready to start back now.”

On the way back the two ladies chatted and found they had many mutual friends, and the little girls planned to play together as soon as they got home. At the suggestion of Ellen’s mother, Mrs. Berry, they stopped at an orange orchard and saw the funny little stoves that are set among the trees to keep the orchard warmer in a cold spell. Mary Jane thought those little stoves the queerest things she’d seen yet.

“You tell me when I leave the door open at home, Mother,” she said, “that I must be trying to warm the whole out of doors and here they really do it!” “So they do,” agreed Mrs. Merrill; “only you see we haven’t an orchard to use the heat up our way!”The owner of the orchard gave each girl an orange and was so nice to them, showing them around and letting the girls pick fruit and take pictures, that they could hardly bear to leave.

“I think,” said Mary Jane as they climbed into the little surrey, “that when I’m big I’ll have me an orange orchard and let little girls come to see me and give ’em fruit— I think that’s an awfully nice business, I do.”

It was almost dinner time when they got back to the hotel; no time for play then. But after dinner Mary Jane took down her Marie Georgannamore and Ellen brought her best doll, Fifi, and the two little girls sat out on the terrace in great big comfy chairs and played together till after eight o’clock. Then Mrs. Merrill came out to take Mary Jane upstairs. “You’ll have to go to sleep as quickly as ever you can,” she said, “because I know an awfully jolly surprise that’s coming to-morrow. Coming if a certain little girl I’m acquainted with gets to sleep.”

“Is it something to play?” guessed Mary Jane.

“No guesses—not even one,” answered Mrs. Merrill, “and I’ll tell you only this much. It’s very jolly; and you’ve often wanted to do it; and you’ve never done it before in all your life.”