“THOSE girls won’t be awake for an hour yet!” said a voice just outside Mary Jane’s window the next morning; “I’ll bet I see the first alligator all right!” But Ned Ritter shouldn’t have been so sure! He little guessed that as he was taking his early morning walk around the boat with his father, he made that rash remark just outside the Merrill girls’ window. And still less did he guess that Alice, just waking up, heard him.

“Mary Jane! Mary Jane!” she whispered; “let’s get up!”

No answer.

“I’ll have to wake her,” said Alice to herself. She bent over the edge of the upper berth where she was sleeping and gave Mary Jane’s elbow a vigorous pull. Mary Jane was that surprised she sat straight up in bed even before she opened her eyes.

“Where is it?” she asked, evidently thinking of alligators.

“Goodness knows!” laughed Alice in a more natural voice now, for Ned and his father had walked out of hearing. “But if we want to see anything first, we’d better be getting up, Mary Jane, because Ned’s out on deck and maybe Katherine is too.”

“Let’s ask mother if we can’t get up now,” suggested Mary Jane and she tapped on the partition. They had made up a code before they went to bed the night before so Mrs. Merrill knew exactly what they meant to say. One tap meant “Mother, are you there?” two taps meant “Please I want a drink,” and three taps meant “Is it time to get up?”

“I was just listening for those taps,” said Mrs. Merrill, at the door of the stateroom; “open the door, girls, and I’ll help you dress. I’m all ready and you want to get out doors as soon as you can—it’s a beautiful morning!”

With her help at buttons and with their hair the dressing business went very quickly and in a very few minutes all three were out on the deck.

“No alligators yet,” Ned’s disappointed voice greeted them.

“I should say not!” laughed the captain who went by just in time to hear what was said. “Wait till the sun gets up high and the air is hotter—then you’ll see them! Had breakfast yet?”

After breakfast he took the four children up by his pilot house and let them sit on a bench there that gave them a fine view of the river and woods. But though they looked and watched till their eyes ached, not a ’gator did they see! “I don’t believe there are any,” exclaimed Alice in disgust, “and I’m going to walk around the back of the boat. When we go around that bend we’re coming to I’m sure I can pull some leaves off that great tree. And I’d love to have them in my collection—‘leaves pulled from the boat on the Ocklawaha’—wouldn’t that look well in my book?”

“I think I’ll go too,” said Katherine, who, when she saw how interested Alice was in her collection, immediately wanted to make one for herself.

“I think I’ll fish,” said Ned; “Father said once he caught a turtle from the boat.” And he too disappeared from the captain’s deck.

Mary Jane, left alone, couldn’t quite make up her mind what to do. It wasn’t any fun staying up there all alone, for the captain was so busy with his steering that he wasn’t a bit of company; she had a notion to go to the back of the boat with the other girls.

Just as she was slipping down from the bench she heard a splash at the bank on the south side of the river, and looking quickly, she spied a great log floating slowly down the stream.

“What made that log fall in?” she asked curiously; “I didn’t see anybody push it!”

Splash! There went another one!

“Funny!” exclaimed Mary Jane to herself now much interested; “now what made that one go, I wonder.” Just then Mrs. Merrill came to the foot of the ladder leading to the captain’s deck.

“All right, Mary Jane?” she asked; “want some company?”

“’Deed yes, Mother,” cried the little girl; “do come up here and see these funny logs! What makes them fall into the river when nobody pushes them? There!” she exclaimed, excitedly, “there goes another one!” Mrs. Merrill looked quickly to where Mary Jane pointed and was just in time to see—a great alligator go sliding into the water!

“Those aren’t logs,” she said, “those are alligators, child! Quick! Let’s call to the others so they can see them too!” But just as she spoke the captain’s voice rang out, “Alligators on the left!” and all the passengers rushed over to see the great creatures as they floated, log-like, down the river.

“That was a good sight,” said the captain; “you must be a mascot, Mary Jane; because we haven’t seen three together yet this season.”

The Merrills found the trip all that it had been promised them. They saw great virgin forests where the trees locked arms over the river; they saw Indian battlefields and Indian burying grounds and then later in the morning, the forests cleared away and about eleven o’clock the boat stopped by an orange grove and everybody piled off for refreshments.

“Eat all you can,” said the owner cordially, “but all you want to carry away, you have to pay for. Just help yourselves, children, help yourselves!” he added as the children hesitated.

“Goody!” said Alice; “this is the first time I ever had the chance to save money by eating! Come on, Mary Jane, let’s begin!”

The pretty little orchard lay on the side of a hill and the orange and lemon and tangerine and kumquot trees were set in neat rows on either side of the walk that led up to the house at the top. The trees were young and the children could easily reach the branches and pick their own fruit.

“I like oranges best,” said Katherine, running to a pretty orange tree.

“I’m after tangerines,” called Alice as she spied a tree of her favorites not far away.

“Well, I don’t want lemons—sour old things!” exclaimed Mary Jane when she saw that she had picked the wrong tree; “I want those little things.”

“Kumquots,” said Mrs. Merrill; “I do too, dear. Here’s a tree.”

It was fun to pick the fruit directly from the long hanging branches; and still more fun to suck the sweet juice with which the golden fruit was filled.

“Who’d have guessed,” exclaimed Alice, “that tangerines could be so juicy—not I!”

But after a little while, appetites were satisfied and the children wanted to play.

“I’ll tell you what let’s do,” suggested Mary Jane after she had eaten about a dozen kumquots and had decided that she simply couldn’t eat another suck; “let’s play house and each tree’ll be a house and that great big old tree’ll be a hotel.”

“And we’ll dress up and be queens and go to visit,” added Alice.

“How you going to dress up in an orange orchard where there aren’t any clothes?” asked Katherine.

“Oh, you don’t have to have real clothes to dress up in—not every time, you don’t,” said Mary Jane scornfully; “Alice can fix it—you see!” and she turned to hear her sister’s plan.

“We’ll make crowns out of orange leaves,” said Alice, quickly picking a few and weaving them together; “see how pretty and glossy they are. Just put them on your head this way, Katherine. There! That’s becoming! Now you make a bigger one and I’ll do one for Mary Jane and for me. You girls pick the leaves for me so I can make them quickly.”

“Then if we’re queens we shouldn’t live in a house, should we?” asked Katherine.

“I should say not!” exclaimed Mary Jane. “These aren’t houses,” she added, waving her hand grandly toward the trees nearest at hand; “these are palaces—your palace and Alice’s palace and mine. And that big one over there we were going to have be a hotel, it’s a banquet hall now.”

Just as the royal play was getting well under way a man came around with paper bags. “Put all the fruit you want to buy in these,” he announced, “and pay for it at the dock when you get aboard the boat.”

“Let’s not bother,” said Katherine; “we don’t want to stop playing.”

“We don’t have to,” replied Alice laughingly, and she picked up the bag the man had laid under her tree; “these are cloth of gold sacks and we’ll fill them with gold nuggets to take to the good queen mother.”

“Why, so we can!” cried Katherine happily; “come on, let’s hurry and get a lot!”

It was a good thing they did hurry for even so the boat’s great whistle sounded before the bags were full and the captain’s call through a megaphone urged them to hurry aboard. “Well, seems to me you don’t intend to be hungry for a few days,” said Mrs. Merrill laughingly as she saw what full bags the children were carrying. “I thought you were too busy playing to pick any and so I got enough for us all. But never mind,” she added, as she saw the girls were looking disappointed; “it’s all so good and it’s wholesome eating too, so we’ll keep it if you don’t mind carrying it.”

The rest of that day’s wonderful ride seemed to Mary Jane like living in a picture show. Not long after they left the orange orchard the great boat turned into the tiny Clear River that runs into the Ocklawaha and it almost seemed as if the broad decks were spreading over the whole of the little stream! Here the water was clear as crystal and the girls could see every fish and turtle and water snake that scurried out of their way as they steamed up stream. In the bright noon sunshine they came into the little lake at the head of the stream and there they got out of the big boat and were rowed around in a small glass bottomed boat. It seemed awfully queer to look through the glass at their feet and see the bubbling of the hidden springs and to watch the bright colored pebbles and stones that tumbled about deep down among the rocks like gay pieces of confetti tossed about in the sunshine.

Then there was the scramble into the big touring car, the drive across country to Ocala, luncheon at the queer station dining room where Mary Jane, for the first time in her life, had the fun of sitting up to a counter to eat, and the rush for the train that was to take them up to Jacksonville and Dadah.

“Well,” said Mary Jane with a sigh of relief as she sank into the comfortable Pullman seat, “I just a-going to sit here all afternoon and think and think and think—I am!” But she didn’t count on the many queer things that may happen in Florida.