“LOOK! Look! Just look there, Dadah!” cried Mary Jane the second morning later as their train dashed through the familiar woods and fields of their own state. “Look what it’s doing!”

The weather was indeed trying to give the returning travelers a frosty welcome. The fields were white with snow and great sheets of driving snowflakes piled up on the car window sill. The girls dressed in a hurry and went to the back platform to see the sight better. But they didn’t stay long! Not out there! The cold wind sent them scurrying into the warm car in a jiffy.

The train was late because of the storm, connections were bad in the city near their home town and the ride over home was slow and cold. So it was a rather weary and half frozen set of travelers who stiffly got off the traction line a couple of blocks from their own house.

“Ugh!” said Mrs. Merrill shivering, “I always like to come home, but I’ll declare I almost dread the next hour. The house will be clammy cold and it will take a while to get the furnace going and there won’t be a thing to eat.”

Mr. Merrill didn’t reply with his usual sympathy. He merely picked up the bag and walked off up the street—nobody guessed that he had to hurry off to keep the twinkle in his eye from being seen! Alice was glad to let him carry her bag too—her hands, used for some days to the summer heat, were cold and stiff; she could hardly manage a little swing of her arms when her mother suggested run and exercise to warm her up.

Mary Jane, hoping Doris might be at a window, had run ahead, but the snow laden hedge made it impossible to see the house.

But when they turned past the hedge at their own gateway, every one stopped still in amazement—all but Mr. Merrill, that is! Smoke was coming from both the chimneys of their own pretty home; the gleam of a fire in the living room fireplace showed from the front windows, and Amanda swung open the front door.

“I see de limited a-goin’ by,” she exclaimed, with a welcoming grin, “and I jes’ seys to myself ‘there’s my folks!’ So I run and put the kettle on! Come right in and I’ll have yo’ a cup o’ tea in a jiffy!”

“How in the world?” exclaimed Mrs. Merrill happily as she and the girls settled themselves cosily before the big, cheerful fire.

“Telegraphing, my dear,” said Mr. Merrill; “you may not know it, but this country has a fairly complete telegraph system and once in a while I think to use it!” He rubbed his hands by the blaze and smiled gayly over the success of his surprise.

“You certainly picked out the right thing to do, Dad,” said Alice as Amanda wheeled the little tea wagon before the fire and Alice spied a piled up plate full of hot cinnamon toast; “it’s worth the fun of going away, just to come home—it really is!”

The first thing after they were warmed and fed, Mary Jane got out her picture folders and spread them on the floor in front of the fire—folder after folder till the rug was almost covered.

“Now,” she said when she had them all in place where she could see them, “I’m going to see if I saw every place I intended to.”

“See if you got the worth of your money, you mean, do you?” laughed her father; “well you just go ahead and see. But if any two girls ever saw more of Florida and were away from home only fourteen days and fifteen nights—I’d like to see them! I’d like to know how they did it!”

And indeed, when Mary Jane and Alice began counting the pictures they had seen they realized more than even before, how very much they had seen. For there were not more than a dozen pictures out of that whole collection that did not look familiar. Think of that!

The next morning Mary Jane buttoned on her leggings, put on her storm rubbers and heavy coat and cap and muff and started off through the snow to school. On her arm in her own little bag she carried all the picture post cards she had brought for her friends in kindergarten. At Doris’s gate she met her friends and Mr. Dana who was taking Doris to school on her sled.

“Pile on, Mary Jane,” he said cordially; “always room for one more on a sled you know. Hold tight, now! Here we go!” And away they dashed down the street and to the school.

When Miss Lynn saw the fine cards Mary Jane had brought for the pupils she at once suggested that they stop regular work for part of the morning and make a party in honor of Mary Jane’s return.

“We can hang the cards all around the room at the edge of the board,” she said, going to her desk to get the box of hangers; “and then as we march around and look at them, you can tell us about each picture.”

Mary Jane and pretty Miss Amerion, the assistant, set busily to work and by the time the bell rang a few minutes later all the pictures were hung in place. It was lots of fun to march around the room at the head of the class and tell interesting things about the pictures. She told about the fire on the boat and about riding the ponies and seeing the queer stoves in the orange orchard and everything she could think of. And she didn’t wonder a bit that the boys and girls (and teachers too) laughed when she told them about their wild ride in the auto in chase of a boat.

“What did you think was the strangest thing you saw, Mary Jane?” asked Miss Lynn when Mary Jane had finished.

“Well—” Mary Jane hesitated. She thought quickly of the jelly fish, the chameleon, the queer sword fish she had seen swimming in Clear River, but none of those seemed quite as queer as the big old alligators that looked so like logs.

“I think the alligators were the queerest,” she said decidedly, and she told how she had been fooled into thinking one was a real log.

Then suddenly she happened to think. “I sent Doris an alligator. I sent her two of ’em. Couldn’t she bring them to school so everybody could see? They were just baby ones of course, but they were funny all the same.”

The whole school looked over to Doris and saw the poor little girl flushed with embarrassment and hanging her head.

“Have you got them, dear?” asked Miss Lynn encouragingly; “maybe we could wrap them up warm and snug and bring them to school to-morrow.”

“Well, you see—” Doris hesitated and then blurted out suddenly, “we had ’em two days and then they both crawled down the register and they haven’t ever come back—not yet they haven’t.”

“They must have thought this country too cold,” said Miss Lynn; “but don’t you worry. We’ve nice pictures to look at and if the alligators ever come back you can bring them to us then.” And Doris was comforted.

For two months after they came home from Florida, Mary Jane went to kindergarten and played with her little friends and helped about the house just as she had loved to do before they went away for those wonderful two weeks. The piled up snows of winter melted into little dirty piles that finally slipped off into the ground without anybody noticing when they went. The buds on the lilac bush began to swell and two gay robins appeared in the garden to announce that spring was coming.

One warm noon time Mary Jane stopped on the front steps to make into a chain the first gay dandelions of the season she had picked on the way home from school.

“See, Dadah!” she exclaimed to her father as he came up the walk, “I got seven and I making them into a chain for mother—won’t she be pleased?”

“Indeed she will,” replied Mr. Merrill, but Mary Jane noticed that his voice sounded as though he was thinking of something else. “Do you like it so very well here, Mary Jane?” he asked and he waved his hand out toward the yard.

“Why yes, Dadah,” replied Mary Jane, puzzled at his manner, “don’t you?”

“Of course,” said Mr. Merrill, “but would you like to live somewhere else, do you think?”

Mary Jane looked out over the pretty front yard, where the grass was so green and the crocuses were peeking up here and there. “Well,” she said, “I like it here and I don’t know what you mean. But I think I’d like it anywhere you and mother and Alice were.”

“That’s my girl!” exclaimed her father as he hugged her close. “Come here, folks,” he added as Alice came up the walk just then and Mrs. Merrill opened the door to greet them; “I’ll tell you the news.” He pulled a yellow telegram from his pocket. “See that? That means new work and a promotion. And it means that we move to Chicago.”

“Leave here?” exclaimed Mrs. Merrill.

“Leave here inside of a month,” he replied. “Leave here and live in the big city.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mary Jane, “go on the train again! Hashed brown potatoes! And have a moving wagon and boxes of things just like other folks! Oh me! Goody! Is it really for true?”

And if you want to read about all the fun Mary Jane had getting acquainted with the big city, exploring its parks and going to school, you will find it all told in

MARY JANE’S CITY HOME

THE MARY JANE SERIES

By Clara Ingram Judson

Cloth, 12 mo. Illustrated

MARY JANE is the typical American little girl who bubbles over with fun and the good things in life. We meet her here on a visit to her grandfather’s farm where she becomes acquainted with farm life and farm animals and thoroughly enjoys the experience. We next see her going to kindergarten and then on a visit to Florida, and then—but read the stories for yourselves.

Exquisitely and charmingly written are these books which every little girl from five to nine years old will want from the first book to the last.

• 1. MARY JANE—HER BOOK.
• 2. MARY JANE—HER VISIT.
• 3. MARY JANE’S KINDERGARTEN.
• 4. MARY JANE DOWN SOUTH.
• 5. MARY JANE’S CITY HOME.
• 6. MARY JANE IN NEW ENGLAND.
• 7. MARY JANE’S COUNTRY HOME.
• 8. MARY JANE AT SCHOOL.
• 9. MARY JANE IN CANADA.
• 10. MARY JANE’S SUMMER FUN.
• 11. MARY JANE’S WINTER SPORTS.
• 12. MARY JANE’S VACATION.
• 13. MARY JANE IN ENGLAND.
• 14. MARY JANE IN SCOTLAND.

Publishers

BARSE & CO.

New York, N. Y. Newark, N. J.