Part 2

“Well!” sighed Mary Jane, as she dropped down in the broad seat of the Pullman car a few minutes later, “I think that’s a city where you do a _lot_!”

“And _I_ think,” replied Mrs. Merrill, reaching down to kiss her little girl, “that I know somebody not so very far from here, who’s going to have dinner and go to bed just about as quick as a wink.”

“And _I_ think,” added Mr. Merrill, “that I know somebody who’d better get to sleep as quick as they can, because to-morrow’s the day we see flowers and--something else.”

And just then, before Mary Jane had a chance to ask a question the porter came through the car calling, “Last call for dinner! Dinner in the dining car! First car in the front of de train!”

AT THE OSTRICH FARM

The very first minute Mary Jane opened her eyes the next morning she peeked out of the window to see if the Southern flowers she had read about and seen pictures of, were in sight. She didn’t see flowers but she did see palm trees--lots of them.

“Mother! Mother!” she called, peeking around into the next berth to speak to her mother, “you ought to get up quick! They’re here, they are, those funny trees with the trimming on the top just like the pictures you showed us. Mother! May I get up and look at them from the back porch?”

Mrs. Merrill looked at her watch and told Mary Jane it was high time they were both getting up if they were to have time to dress and eat breakfast before the train got into Jacksonville.

“Then I’ll beat you dressed, I will,” said Mary Jane gayly and she set to work at the job of dressing. First she took down her stockings that had hung all night over the little hammock by the window, and put those on; then the shoes that had been in the hammock went on next. After that she rolled up the covers clear to the bottom of the bed to get them out of the way, took down her clothes that had been hanging all night on a coat rack by the big curtains and put those on. She stopped just long enough to call, “Didn’t I beat?” to her mother before she hurried off to the wash room. She thought it so much fun to brush her teeth in the funny little bowl made for that purpose that she wanted to have plenty of time to enjoy the job.

But Alice was there before her, as excited as Mary Jane could possibly be about the palm trees and the few very fierce looking razor-back hogs she had seen grunting and snorting at the train, and so it was a rather sketchy scrubbing they gave themselves. Mrs. Merrill joined them in a minute to say that the diner was taken off in the night and that breakfast would be served in the observation car.

“Then I may go back there now, mayn’t I, Mother?” asked Mary Jane, “and I know the way all by myself. I’ll stay right on the back porch and not go near the gate till you come.” The train was exactly the same as the one on which the Merrills had come down to Birmingham two days before and Mary Jane felt so at home after her whole day and two nights of travel she almost thought the train was her own.

“Yes, you may if Alice is ready and if you promise to stay right together,” said Mrs. Merrill; “it will be fine to have some fresh air before breakfast.”

The girls hurried back through the train so as not to lose a minute. The country looked entirely different from what they had seen before; the hills and mountains were all gone; many different sorts of trees made up the woods and even the grasses looked different from what the girls were used to seeing. And the roads! Such queer muddy things they were, with only an occasional brick paved road fit for automobile travel.

All too soon Mr. Merrill came out and announced, “You can’t have a regular breakfast this morning, girls, just fruit and a bite of something the steward says, so you’d better come and get what there is right away.”

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mary Jane in great distress, “won’t they have hashed brown potatoes?”

“Haven’t you had enough of those yet?” laughed Mr. Merrill. But Mary Jane’s fright proved to be a false alarm; there was plenty of breakfast for folks who were used to simple food--hashed brown potatoes for Mary Jane, eggs for Alice and her father and toast for Mrs. Merrill.

The train was running about forty minutes late the conductor reported so there was time to go back onto the back platform a while before Jacksonville was reached.

When Mary Jane got off the train at Jacksonville she had expected to step right out to flower beds and summer beauties. Instead of that, such a sight as met her eyes she never would have dreamed of! Smoke, and dirt, and dripping water, and slush under foot, and the horrid smell of burned wood and leather. And such confusion that Mary Jane felt sure they must have fallen into a cyclone or something.

“What’s the trouble?” called Mr. Merrill to an usher who was trying to get through the crowd to carry their bags, “what’s happened? Never saw so much going on in this station before in all _my_ life.”

“Fire, sir!” replied the usher, “pretty bad fire, sir. The station, she took a-fire last night and dey jes got her out ’bout an hour ago. Got any luggage here, sir?”

“Not a bit, it’s on this train we came on,” answered Mr. Merrill.

“You’s lucky, sir, you is,” laughed the darky and he piloted them out into the street.

They walked about a half a block away from the confusion of the station and then Mrs. Merrill said, “Now look, girls!” And the girls looked away from the burned roof of the pretty station and out toward the city. And there they saw the summerland they had hoped for!--palm trees and flowers growing in the parkways, summer dresses on the passersby and a warmth and glow in the air.

“Oh, Mother!” exclaimed Alice happily, “it’s true, isn’t it? Summer _is_ here--and please may we take off our coats?”

“Not so fast,” replied Mrs. Merrill, “you’ll find them none too warm when you’re riding.” And sure enough, when they got into the taxi Mr. Merrill signaled and started swiftly up the street, they weren’t a bit too warm.

All too soon their hotel was reached, the girls would have liked to ride all day.

“Never you mind,” said Mr. Merrill consolingly, “you shall ride again in about a half an hour. But come in first and leave your bags, and me.”

“Leave you, Dadah?” asked Mary Jane, “you’re not going away from here, are you?”

“I’m not, but you will be,” said Mr. Merrill. “I mean that my business begins here this morning and that you and mother will have to get around by yourselves while I work. But mother knows the way about just as well as I do and she’ll see that you poke into every corner you want to see.”

When the girls went around to the front of the hotel and saw the beautiful park of palms and flowers that filled a whole block, they were not anxious to leave it.

“Let’s not ride,” suggested Mary Jane, “let’s stay and play under those trees.”

“I don’t know about that,” replied Mrs. Merrill, “you see, I know what there is to see on our ride and _you_ don’t. Better ride while you can and play in the park this noon.”

So a few minutes later Mr. Merrill put them all three into a big car and started off toward the business part of the city for his work.

The girls had never ridden in a sight seeing car before and they begged a place right by the driver so they would be sure to see and hear everything. Mrs. Merrill sat just behind them where they could speak to her and also could have the comfortable feeling that she was very near. First they drove down the river and saw glimpses of the broad St. Johns River and enjoyed the pretty trees and gardens and homes that nestled along its low banks. Then they turned back through the city and out on the other side.

“Where we going now?” asked Mary Jane when she noticed that the houses were getting smaller and fewer and further apart.

“Out to the Farm,” replied the driver.

“A regular farm where they grow chickens and things like my Grandmother does?” asked the little girl.

“It’s a regular farm all right, Miss,” said the driver, “but they don’t grow anything your Grandmother does. They grow alligators and ostriches.”

“My gracious!” exclaimed Mary Jane, her eyes open wide with amazement, “do they plant ’em?”

The driver laughed and answered, “You just wait and see--we’re most there now. See that white fence and those buildings? There we are!”

With a flourish he stopped by the big white gate and Mrs. Merrill and the girls got out of the car. “You’ll wait for us?” she asked the driver.

“Long as you like,” he replied, so without a bit of worry about time they went into the “Farm.”

At first Mary Jane was disappointed for there seemed to be nothing in the whole place but fences! But when they walked closer they easily found the Alligator Farm and there the girls were so interested that they forgot all about such creatures as ostriches. They saw big alligators and little alligators and tiny, tiny little alligators that would have easily been hidden in Mary Jane’s small hand. They saw the great big fellow, more than a hundred years old, get his food and such gleaming teeth as he had made Mary Jane glad he was inside an iron fence--_there_ she liked to watch him, but she didn’t think he was _quite_ the creature one would like to meet walking along a road. They saw alligators flop their tails to music--or at least the keepers _said_ they flopped to music so it must be so!--and most wonderful of all, they saw alligators “shoot the shoots” into a small lake. There was no pretend about that; the ’gators climbed slowly and careful up the steps of the shoot, crawled over the top and then with a loud “thud” dropped their clumsy bodies onto the shoot and slid down into the water.

Mary Jane and Alice would have been glad to stay there all morning watching these strange creatures and Mrs. Merrill had to remind them twice about the ostriches and about lunch and more riding before they could tear themselves away.

They wandered over to the ostrich section of the “Farm” and found the queer looking birds poking their noses outside the wire fence begging as plain as could be for food.

“You and Mary Jane feed them, Mother,” suggested Alice, “and I’ll take your picture.”

Mrs. Merrill bought some food and she and Mary Jane stood close to the fence and handed it in. The birds reached their long necks out and _nearly_ helped themselves out of the bags, so tame were they. One big bird seemed to take a fancy to Mary Jane and he was determined to get his food from her. Just as Alice was ready to take the picture he reached out and made a grab.

“Owh!” screamed the little girl, “he got it! Make him give it back quick, Mother!”

“What did he get?” said Mrs. Merrill coming close.

“My pocket book!” screamed Mary Jane who was fairly dancing she was so excited, “he just reached his bill out and grabbed it out of my hand, he did.” And sure enough, the great bird was making off to his nest just as fast as he could go (which was pretty fast) and from his bill hung Mary Jane’s pretty new pocket book in which she had two best kerchiefs and twenty-five cents of spending money.

The keeper heard Mary Jane’s screams (and so did lots of other folks by the way) and he came running to see what had happened.

“Is that all!” he exclaimed, when Mrs. Merrill pointed out what the ostrich had done, “we’ll have that bag in no time--I was afraid he’d hurt the little girl though I did think he was too tame for doing harm.”

He unlocked the gate and hurried over to where the big bird stood. As soon as the ostrich saw his keeper coming he dropped the bag and raced off with his long funny stride just as though he knew he had done wrong and wanted to get away. Mary Jane couldn’t help but laugh at him he looked so afraid and so very comical. She got her pocket book back undamaged and as the man handed it to her he said, “Too bad, Missy, too bad. But you come again and I’ll make him behave. Wouldn’t you like a little ’gator for a present, ’count of your scare?”

“Oh,” replied Mary Jane, her eyes shining with delight, “I don’t need one myself ’cause I’m here to see ’em. But I want one for my little chum--she’s home.”

“All right, Missy,” said the man, “I’d like to send her one if your mother will allow me to.” And he pulled out his book and took down the address.

So that’s how it happened that a week later the expressman delivered a box containing two live alligators to the amazed Dana family.

“THE BOAT’S A-FIRE!”

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!”