Mary Jane's City Home.

by Clara Ingram Judson.

FINDING THE NEW HOME

The late afternoon sunshine sent its slanting, golden rays through the car windows on to the map that Mary Jane and her sister Alice had spread out on the table between the seats of the Pullman in which they were riding.

"And all that wiggly line is water?" Mary Jane was asking.

"Every bit water," replied their father, who bent over their heads to explain what they were looking at; "a lot of water, you see. You remember I told you that Chicago is right on the edge of Lake Michigan. And Lake Michigan, so far as looks are concerned, might just as well be the ocean you saw down in Florida--it's so big you can't see the other side."

"And does it have big waves?" asked Mary Jane.

"Just you wait and see," promised Mr. Merrill. "Big waves! I should say it has!"

"And all the green part of the map is parks," said Alice, quoting what her father had told them when he first showed them the map.

"Then there must be a lot of parks," suggested Mary Jane with interest. "I think I'd like to live by a park," she added thoughtfully.

"I think I should too," agreed Mr. Merrill, "and it's near a park we will make the first hunt for a home."

"Oh, look!" cried Mary Jane suddenly as she glanced up from the spread-out map; "what's that, Dadah?"

"That's the beginning of Chicago," said Mr. Merrill. "Let's fold up the map now and see what we can of the city. This is South Chicago; and those great stacks and flaming chimneys are steel mills and foundries and factories--watch now! There are more!"

The train on which the Merrill family were traveling went dashing past factory after factory--past an occasional open s.p.a.ce where they could see in the distance the blue gleam of Lake Michigan and past great wide stretches where tracks and more tracks on which freight cars and engines sped up and down showed them something of the whirling industry that has made South Chicago famous. No wonder it was a strange sight to the two girls--they had never before seen anything that made them even guess the big business that they now saw spread out before them.

They had spent all their lives thus far--Alice was twelve and Mary Jane going on six--in a small city of the Middle West and though they had had a fine summer in the country visiting grandma and grandpa and had only the winter before taken a beautiful trip through Florida, they had never been to a great city. And now they were not going to visit or to take a trip.

They were going to live there. The great big city of Chicago was to be their home.

The pretty little house they had loved so well was sold. The furniture and books and dolls and clothes were all packed and loaded on a freight car to follow them to the city and all the dear friends had been given a farewell. Mary Jane had loved the excitement and muss of packing; the great boxes and the ma.s.ses of crinkly excelsior and the workmen around who always had time for a pleasant joke with an interested little girl. But when it came time to say good-by to Doris and to her much loved kindergarten and to all the boys and girls in school and "on her block,"

going away wasn't so funny. In fact, Mary Jane felt a queer and troublesome lump in her throat most of the morning when the good-bys were said.

But the ride on the train (and how Mary Jane did love to ride on the train); and the nice luncheon on the diner (and how Mary Jane did _adore_ eating on a diner--hashed brown potatoes, a whole order by herself and ice cream and everything!); and then father's nice talk about all the fun they were going to have, made the lump vanish and in its place there developed an eager desire to see the new city and to begin all the promised fun. It was then that Mr. Merrill showed them the big map of the city and pointed out the part of the city where they would likely live.

As the girls watched, the great factories and foundries slipped away into the distance, and in their place the girls could see houses and occasional stores and here and there a station, past which their train dashed as though it wasn't looking for stations to-day, thank you.

"Don't we stop anywhere?" asked Mary Jane after she had counted three of these little stations.

"Those are suburban stations," explained Mr. Merrill, "and a big through train like ours hasn't time to stop at every one. Pretty soon another train will come along and stop at each one of those we are now pa.s.sing so don't you worry about folks getting left. _This_ train we are on has got to get us into Chicago in time for dinner."

And just at that minute, when the big three story apartment buildings that looked so very queer and strange to Mary Jane, began to fill every block, the porter came to brush her off and to help her on with her coat.

"I'm going to live here in Chicago," she said to him as he held the coat for her, "and it's a big place with lots of lake and parks and--houses, I guess, and most everything."

"'Deed it is big, missy," replied the porter, "and I hope you's going to like it a lot, I do."

"I'm a-going to," answered Mary Jane confidently, as she picked up Georgiannamore and Georgiannamore's suit case which at the last moment couldn't possibly be packed in the trunk, and followed her father and mother down the aisle, "'cause mother and Dadah and Alice are going to live here too and we always have fun."

Mr. and Mrs. Merrill had decided to get off at one of the larger suburban stations and spend a few days in a near-by hotel; they thought the comparative quiet of a residence hotel would be better for their girls than the flurry and hurry of a big down town hotel. But to Mary Jane, accustomed to the sights and sounds of a small city where street cars went dignifiedly past every fifteen minutes and where traffic "cops" would have very few duties, the confusion she found herself in was quite enough to be very interesting.

They stepped off the train, walked down some stairs and found themselves on the sidewalk of a very busy street. Overhead the noise of their own train rumbling cityward made a terrific din; and as though that were not enough, still higher up the great elevated car line made a rumble and roar. Mary Jane craned her neck as they walked from under the trains and there high in the air, she saw street cars running along as though street cars always had and always would, run on tracks high up in the air!

"Can we ride on it, Dadah?" she shouted to her father, "are we going to ride on that train up on stilts?"

Mr. Merrill shook his head laughingly and hurried them into a waiting taxi.

"We're not going to ride there to-day," he explained when the door of the car shut out some of the noise, "but some day soon we'll take a long ride on the elevated and then you can see all the back yards and back porches and parks and streets and everything about the city, just as plain as plain can be."

While he was talking, the Merrills drove through streets lined on both sides with three-story apartment buildings. But before Mary Jane had time to ask a question or even think what she would like to say, they whisked around a corner and out into the beautiful wide driveway on the Midway--the long, green parkway that stretched, or so it seemed to Mary Jane, for miles in both directions. The taxi pulled up in front of a comfortable looking hotel right on the side of the park and Mary Jane wasn't a bit sorry to get out and take a breath of fresh air and look at the lovely view before her.

"Now just as soon as you are washed up," said Mrs. Merrill, briskly, as they went into the hotel, "you and Alice may come out onto this nice porch and watch the children play on the Midway and get a little run before dinner."

You may be sure that with that promise before her, Mary Jane didn't take very long to primp. She had spied a group of children about her age, who seemed to be having a beautiful time playing ball out there on the gra.s.s and she couldn't help noticing that they played just as she and Doris did and she couldn't help wishing that she too, even though she was a new little girl just come to town, could play with them. So she stood very still while Mrs. Merrill tied the fresh hair bow and slipped on a clean frock and then, holding tight to big sister Alice's friendly hand she went down the one flight of stairs--she was in far too big a hurry to wait for the elevator--and out onto the long roomy porch.

Just across the narrow street in front of the hotel and on the nearest bit of parkway, three little girls about Mary Jane's age were still playing ball. One was dainty and small and had yellow curls; one was rather tall and had long straight dark hair and the third had dark, straight hair bobbed short, and snapping black eyes.

"Wouldn't it be funny," said Mary Jane as she looked at them wistfully, "if I'd get to know those girls and they'd be friends. If I _did_," she added, "I think she'd be my mostest friend," and Mary Jane pointed to the little girl with the dark, bobbed hair.

While they watched and were trying to get up courage to go over and play too, a pretty girl about Alice's age came along the street. Her hair was copper colored and curly and very, very pretty. And her smile when she saw the little girls who were playing, made her seem so friendly and "homey."

"I've been hunting you, Betty," she said to the little girl Mary Jane liked best. "It's time to come home for dinner."

So the four girls, three little folks and one bigger one, went around the corner toward home, and two strangers, standing on the porch, watched them till they were quite out of sight.

"It would be funny," said Alice, "if we'd ever get to know them. I'm sure I'd like to."

"Wouldn't it though!" exclaimed Mary Jane. "I hope we do!"

And all the time they were eating their first dinner in Chicago, and telling mother and father about the children they had seen and making plans about what to do to-morrow, they were thinking about those two girls and wishing to know them better.

Little did they guess what would really truly happen before the week was over!

THE FOLKS AROUND THE CORNER

Three whole days of flat hunting! And of all the fun she had ever had in her more than five years of life, Mary Jane thought flat hunting in Chicago was the most fun of all! She loved the mystery of each new apartment; the guessing which room might be hers and which mother's; the hunting up the door bell and hearing its sound (for as you very well know each door bell has a sound of its own); the poking into closets and pantries and porches. It was the most delightful sort of exploring she had ever come across and she couldn't at all understand why mother and father got tired and somewhat discouraged. For _her_ part Mary Jane was tempted to wish that they would never find a flat, well hardly that; but that finding the right one would take a long, oh, a very long time!

But by the afternoon of the third day, her legs began to get a little tired too, and her eyes looked more often to the green of the Midway they occasionally saw and she thought that flats, even empty flats, really should have chairs for folks to sit on. So, as a matter of fact, she wasn't half as sorry as she had thought she would be, when, on the afternoon of the third day of hunting the Merrill family came across a charming little apartment.

It was on the second floor of a very attractive red brick building; it had five rooms, quite too small, father thought, but then one can't have everything, they had found, and every room was light and sunny and cheerful. But the part about it that Mary Jane and Alice liked the best was the back porch. To be sure there was a front porch, a pretty, little porch with a stone railing and a view way down the street toward the park and lake. But off the dining room the girls discovered a small balcony that overlooked the back yard next door, a back yard that had a garden laid out and a chicken house and everything so homey and comfortable looking that the girls immediately wanted to sit out and watch.

"I think if we'd stay here maybe some children would come out to play,"

suggested Mary Jane in a whisper.