FORTUNATELY they got back to the hotel a while before lunch time and could take a walk through the beautiful little park. Alice in particular was anxious to see every sort of flower and plant and to learn its name. But dear me! with all the lovely flowers there it would have taken a day to study them every one and she had to be content with seeing only a small part of the grounds.

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Merrill, as they sat down to lunch, “the same flowers will be all through Florida and you’ll have plenty of time to see them all you wish.”

“Oh!” exclaimed a lady who sat at the same table with them, “your little daughter doesn’t think these flowers are the sights she is to see, does she? Just wait till you get further south, this early in the season every ten miles makes a difference and you’ll find lovelier gardens the further you go.”

Alice and Mary Jane opened their eyes in amazement; lovelier flowers than these! Weren’t they lucky to be seeing so much? Mrs. Merrill continued the conversation with the table mates and asked where she could find about trains going to the beach.

“I really don’t know,” replied the lady, who proved to be Mrs. Wilkins of New York State, a friend of Mrs. Merrill’s cousin, “because we hadn’t thought of going there. We can see the beach when we are further south so we’re going to take a boat ride on the St. Johns River. That’s something you can’t do at the beach resorts.”

“That sounds good,” agreed Mrs. Merrill, “what do you girls think?”

Alice and Mary Jane were delighted with the idea of a boat ride and Mrs. Wilkins urged them to decide to go on “their” boat. They had decided to go on a comfortable, safe looking steamer of fair size that went up the river to Mandarin, the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe. There, so they had been promised, they might see the very nook in the trees where she did so much of the writing that made her famous.

So the lunch visit was cut short and the little party drove at once to the dock and settled themselves on the upper, front deck of the river boat. Mary Jane wasn’t in any particular hurry for the boat to start because from her safe deck she could look down on the wharves and see the bustle and hurry of shipping fruit and enjoy the fun of watching the dozens of gay, lazy, little negro boys who were supposed to be helping the work. They sang so well and helped themselves to fruit so generously and teased each other so comically that Mary Jane thought it was as good as watching a play to see them. When the boat finally started away from the dock, Mr. Wilkins took the two girls down to the engine room and explained the workings of the boat to them. Mary Jane thought it very wonderful that the queer looking engine that went “Phis-s-s-sh, ping; Phis-s-s-sh, ping!” was the thing that sent so big a boat a-going through the water.

They must have stayed down stairs longer than they realized for when they came on deck again, the city of Jacksonville was way, way off and the boat was beginning to sidle up to the left bank of the river. Before long they were landed at a ricketty old dock that stuck its nose out into the river to greet them.

“Back in an hour!” the Captain called as the boat backed away, “plenty of time to see the homestead. It’s only five minutes walk down the river bank.”

The little party of tourists were quickly surrounded by a crowd of children who ran out onto the dock to greet them and beg them to buy bananas, grapefruit, oranges and flowers.

“Not till we come back,” said Mrs. Merrill firmly, “but if any of you can show us Mrs. Stowe’s home we may buy something before we leave.”

Fortunately it wasn’t far to go. The beautiful trees along the river bank, dripping with streamers of Spanish moss, made such nice play corners that Mary Jane was much more interested in playing house than in seeing famous sights!

“Please let me stay here and play while you look at houses, Mother,” said the little girl. “I’ll stay right here, ’deed I will, and I can’t get lost because in front there’s only the river and in back there’s only the road and the house and you.”

“And let me stay too,” said Alice; “I could make the nicest play house here—see, Mother, those twisted branches and the view across the river?”

So the grown folks went on with the sightseeing and the two girls and about eight of the neighbor children stayed by the river bank.

“Now,” said Alice, who was quite at home making playhouses even though they were located in Florida, “this is the living room and here’s the dining room and here, where you can see the river best, is the porch.”

“Where’s your walls?” asked one of the neighbor children who evidently wasn’t used to making up houses as the Merrill girls were, “looks like all one room to me!”

“But it isn’t,” explained Alice, “you have to pretend the walls.”

“You can’t pretend walls,” laughed the boy, “walls is real! Can’t you make ’em?”

“Yes, we could if we had burrs,” said Alice thoughtfully looking around. “Have you got anything here that will stick together easily?”

Three children darted off shouting “Yes! We’ll get it!” all in one breath and in a few minutes they were back with great prickly branches.

“Goody! Goody! Goody!” shouted Mary Jane happily, “now we’ll have time to make the whole house before mother gets back, ’cause those are so nice and big.” She reached out for a branch so as to begin building her share.

But dear me, she didn’t know much about Florida “prickers” or she wouldn’t have been in such a hurry! The branches had tiny, queer little prickers far different from any she had ever touched or seen and in a second her fingers were full of itching barbs.

“Wait, wait, wait!” called one of the bigger girls, “don’t rub it! Don’t touch it! I’ll get them out for you.” She must have had them in her own fingers before, because she seemed to know exactly how to get the troublesome things out. And then, when Mary Jane’s hand felt all right again, the big girl, who said her name was Maggie, showed them just how to handle the pricky cactus branches without getting the sharp spines into fingers.

Then Alice showed them a plan of making the walls and the children set to work. It was fun making a tree house in the crooked, gnarled, moss-covered old tree and it was fun playing with new children who so quickly learned to play just as the Merrill children did.

“What’s yer doing?” asked one girl as she saw Mary Jane apparently pinch herself.

“I’m just a-pinching myself,” laughed Mary Jane; “couldn’t you see? I’m a-pinching myself to see if I’m me! I feel like I was somebody else I’m dreaming about ’way down here playing.” “Well, you’re you, don’t you worry,” said Alice gayly, “and you better hurry if you want to finish sticking flowers in this wall because I can hear the folks coming back as sure as can be.”

“How pretty!” exclaimed Mrs. Merrill, as she came close enough to see the playhouse the children had made.

“And this is the very tree I was telling you about,” said the guide who came with them; “this very branched tree is where Mrs. Stowe sat when doing much of her writing.”

“Isn’t it interesting,” said Mrs. Merrill to the girls, “to think you have made a playhouse in the very tree where Mrs. Stowe wrote parts of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’?”

“Yes, I ’spect it’s interesting,” said Mary Jane, “but I know it’s fun. And please, Mother, do we have to go yet? Can’t we build some more?”

“I’m afraid not, girlies,” said Mrs. Merrill regretfully, “because our hour is up and our boat should be coming around the bend of the river this very minute.”

But though they all went back at once to the dock, they had a long, long wait till the boat came. The sun began going down in the west and the girls got so very hungry they were only too glad to buy generous helpings of fruit from their new playmates. And finally when a boat did come to the dock it wasn’t the nice boat they had come down on at all! It was a small boat, oh, a very small boat, already so full of passengers that when the new folks got on at the Mandarin dock it was loaded almost to the water line.

“Never mind,” said Mr. Wilkins comfortingly; “it surely must be safe and anyway it’s only a short trip. Perhaps we can get seats at the back.” And there they settled themselves and waved good-by to their new friends as the boat steamed down stream toward the distant city. For a while the girls were content to sit and eat their oranges and chat of the fun they had just had. But in the course of an hour, Mary Jane began to fidget and to ask for something to do.

“Nothing much to do on this boat but to sit still, Mary Jane,” said Mrs. Merrill. “It isn’t big enough for a little girl to walk around and see things—you’d be in folks’ way. Suppose you just sit still and look all around and see how much you can see. Maybe you’ll find something interesting to talk about that way.”

So Mary Jane sat still (all but wiggling her feet and she thought that didn’t count), and looked around the boat. She saw folks all around her who had been sight-seeing and who had armfuls of flowers and fruit they had brought from up the river. But in the front of the boat she saw six or eight men in earnest talk at the prow—something seemed to be exciting them very much. And then, queerest of all, up on the tiny half deck of the boat she saw a man and a woman taking turns at a strange looking pump sort of a thing that seemed not to work very smoothly as they tried to make it go back and forth. For a minute she watched them; then she turned to her mother and asked, “What is that thing, Mother? And what are they doing with it? What’s the matter?”

Mrs. Merrill and Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins looked to where Mary Jane pointed and Mr. Wilkins got up quickly and stepped up onto the little half deck.

But before he had had time to ask a question, the woman who was trying to work the pump, turned and replied to Mary Jane’s questions.

“The boat’s a-fire!” she called, “that’s the matter! The boat’s a-fire and the pump’s broke!”

Mr. Wilkins spoke up in a loud, firm voice, “But I think we can fix it at once if every one will sit still. Will the Captain please put to shore at once?”

But that was just what the Captain would not do. His crew had been trying for some minutes to get him to turn in toward the nearest shore, but he obstinately refused to do so.

“The pump’s broke,” he admitted, “but the fire ain’t much and we’ll get to dock all right—now jes’ don’t get excited, folks!”

As he spoke, little puffs of smoke rose from the engine room and the big pile of dry wood which had carelessly been piled too close to the firebox showed signs of bursting out into great flames.

The passengers, remembering the crowded boat, tried to sit still and be quiet and calm. But when they saw the twinkling lights of the city, still so very far away; felt the fading light and the dampness of the evening chill, and saw how far even the nearest shore of the wide river seemed to be, they couldn’t help noticing that there wasn’t a life belt or boat to be had. Almost everybody began to feel panicky.

And at that very minute Mary Jane began to cry. Not a loud panicky cry, but a low, sobbing cry that sounded very heartbroken.

“Don’t be afraid, little girl,” said the man next to her; “we’ll get you home safe some way!”

“I’m not afraid,” Mary Jane managed to say between sobs, “’cause I can float. But if I have to get into the river and float, who’s going to take care of this big banana I’m taking to my Dadah? He likes bananas!”

For a second every one on the boat stared. And then a general laugh relieved the tension, and folks were willing to sit down and trust to getting a-shore. The pump was kept working as hard as its broken condition would let it; men dipped into the river with the only two buckets aboard and tossed water onto the fire and slowly the lights of the city twinkled nearer—and nearer—and nearer.

Other boats came comfortingly near and were passed; docks loomed out of the twilight, and finally with a bump the little, overcrowded boat slipped into its place by the shore.

There wasn’t a panic even then, but folks, some way, got off that boat in a hurry. The firm land never had felt so good!

“Where’s the little girl who wanted to save her banana?” called the Captain as he turned his boat over to the dock firemen. “I want to thank her.”

But the Merrills were already out of hearing hurrying to their belated dinner, their Dadah and jolly plan-making for the morrow.