"Sure!" he replied, "it's just as easy! Only girls are 'fraidies."

"I guess I'm not," declared Mary Jane firmly, "watch!" She stepped up on the stone rim--it was about eight inches wide--and walked boldly along toward the middle of the long side of the pool.

"You can, can't you," said the boy admiringly.

"Just as easy," replied Mary Jane, for when she found she could do what he had asked she was anxious to have it appear to be as easy for her as for him.

"Come on," the boy suggested, "let's race!"

"Race?" asked Mary Jane, "how?"

"'Round the pool. You start this way, and I'll start that way and the one that gets around home first beats."

"All right," agreed Mary Jane, "let's."

Now before Mary Jane saw the boy by the pool, Mrs. Merrill spied some very beautiful gra.s.ses over at one side of the gardens; the very sort of gra.s.ses, she decided, that Mary Jane's grandmother would like to use in her flower beds by the driveways. And of course she wanted to find out the names of the gra.s.ses so she could write to grandmother about them. Seeing that Mary Jane was so absorbed in the pool and the lilies, she slipped over to look at the name sign which she knew would be stuck right by the roots. She jotted the name down in her note book, looked along at a few others and--turned back to the pool just in time to see her small daughter and a strange boy run racingly along the rim of the pool straight at each other.

"Mary Jane! Mary Jane!" she called, "jump down onto the ground! Jump down!"

Whether Mary Jane heard her and became confused, or whether the boy's b.u.mping into her made her lose her balance, n.o.body ever quite found out.

But anyway, right before Mrs. Merrill's astonished eyes, Mary Jane Merrill tumbled 'kplump--into the lily pool!

Fortunately the lily pool wasn't very deep so Mary Jane didn't fall far.

But she did hit the bottom pretty hard; so hard that when she bobbed up, her head out of water and her feet on the bottom, she hardly knew what had happened to her.

Mrs. Merrill screamed and Mr. Merrill, Alice, three policemen and about twenty other people came running to see what had happened. It wasn't necessary for anybody to jump in and make a triumphant rescue for Mary Jane was so close to sh.o.r.e that Mrs. Merrill had taken firm hold of her hand and pulled her out just as all the folks got there. So there was nothing for them to do but to stare and to ask questions.

"How did she do it?" asked the first policeman.

"Hurt you any?" asked the second.

"You and your mother come with me," said the third (and Mary Jane guessed right away from his voice that he must have some little girls of his own), "and I'll show you where you can dry your clothes."

The procession of policemen and onlookers, led by a very wet and greatly embarra.s.sed little girl, crossed the gardens, crossed the street and went into a comfortable big building. There a kindly matron produced a big bathrobe in which Mary Jane sat while her dress was wrung out and dried.

And wasn't she glad there was a good hot sun so things could dry quickly!

Finally, when Mary Jane was beginning to get awfully hungry, mother announced that the clothes were dry and that she had pulled and stretched them the best she could in the place of ironing. So Mary Jane dressed and they went in search of Alice and her father.

"Well, you certainly do mix up baths with your picnics," laughed Mr.

Merrill when he saw them coming. "Remember the time you fell into Clearwater, p.u.s.s.y?"

"But it isn't so bad, really, Dadah," said Mary Jane, "and I'm not wet now."

"So you're not," said Mr. Merrill, "but _I_ am hungry--anybody agree with me?"

They all admitted to being nearly starved, so they found a pretty, gra.s.sy spot close by the lake on which several beautiful swans were sunning themselves, and there they spread out the luncheon they had brought. At first the girls were so hungry they didn't want to do anything but eat.

But by the time they had eaten a plateful of potato salad and three or four sandwiches, the swans discovered their lunching place and came to call. Evidently swans were used to being treated very nicely by folks who came to the park for they didn't seem to have a trace of fear of strangers.

The girls tossed the crusts of the sandwiches to the edge of the water and the swans bent their long necks and picked them up and ate them, every crust, so daintily just as though crusts were a diet fit for kings--and swans. The swans didn't actually come out of the water, but they came so close to the sh.o.r.e that the girls could almost touch them and they soon got to feeling very well acquainted.

So it was with some regret that they heard Mr. Merrill say, "Well, girls, weren't we to see some of the other parks too?" And here it was four o'clock!

The basket was packed--and there wasn't a sc.r.a.p of anything a swan could eat, you may be sure of that--and they strolled down to the roadway. In a minute or two Mr. Merrill hailed a pa.s.sing taxi and they settled themselves for a nice long ride.

They didn't stop at any other park; Mary Jane was sure no other could be as interesting as the one where she had had such exciting experiences and Alice was quite as content as her father and mother to sit back, cool and comfortable, and see the beautiful flowers and shrubbery slip past them.

So they rode and rode through one park after another, it seemed, till suddenly Mary Jane spied something that looked familiar.

"That's my Midway!" she announced, as the car turned into the long, broad stretch of parkway near their own home.

"Sure enough it is!" exclaimed Mr. Merrill in pretended amazement, "we'll have to turn around and go back!"

"No we won't," said Mary Jane, "we'll go home."

So they went on home, just in time to cook a good warm dinner and to talk over and over again the many things they had seen in the parks.

VISITORS--AND A BOAT RIDE

One day, not so very long after the trip through the parks, the bell at the Merrills' front door pealed long and hard. Mary Jane, whose job was answering the door, ran to the little house 'phone, and heard a loud voice shout, "Special for Merrill!"

"What's he mean, mother?" she asked, in a puzzled voice.

"Better press the buzzer and let him in, dear," replied Mrs. Merrill, "if he has the name right he must have something for us."

So Mary Jane pressed the downstairs buzzer and then opened the front door.

Yes, it was for them--a special delivery letter for Mrs. Merrill. Mary Jane and Alice were much excited and could hardly wait till the messenger's book was signed and the letter was opened.

"It's from grandma," said Mrs. Merrill as she glanced at the writing, "and listen! This is what she says:

"'Grandpa finds quite unexpectedly that he must come to Chicago on business and he says that if it's convenient to you folks I can come along and we'll stay two or three days for a visit. Please wire reply because we must start Wednesday evening.'"

"And it's ten o'clock Wednesday morning now!" exclaimed Mrs. Merrill. She hurried to the telephone, called Mr. Merrill so he could send a telegram at once, then she and the two girls went right to work making ready for the guests.

It was decided that Alice and Mary Jane should sleep on couches and give up their room to the visitors. "Now's when I wish we had our nice guest room," said Mrs. Merrill, "but then, grandma knows that folks who live in Chicago flats don't keep guest rooms for infrequent visitors." For her part, Mary Jane thought sleeping on a couch would be great fun--so grown up and different from every day. She was to have the dining-room couch and Alice was to sleep in the living-room. When all plans were made, bedding sorted out and laid ready for making up the beds fresh first thing in the morning, Mrs. Merrill began planning the meals. If the visitors were to stay only a short time she wanted to have as much baking and marketing as possible done beforehand, so every minute could be spent in fun and visiting. Alice and Mary Jane, who had been marketing so much with their mother of late that they really could be trusted, took a long list up to the grocery and Mrs. Merrill set to work baking coffeecake and bread and cookies. Um-m! It wasn't an hour till that tiny kitchen began to smell so good that the girls could hardly be coaxed away. Mrs. Merrill let them help in a good many ways. Mary Jane put the sugar and nuts on the tops of the cookies after her mother put them in the pan and Alice, who was getting to be a really good cook, tended to the baking. She put the big pans in, and watched the baking, and took them out when every cookie was evenly browned. Then, after she took a pan out of the oven, she gently lifted the hot cookies out from the baking pan onto a wire rack where they could cool without losing their pretty shapes. When the cookies were cool, it was Mary Jane's turn again. She put them all in the tin cookie box, counting them and laying them neatly between layers of paraffin paper so they would keep fresh even in the hot weather.

It was a rule that only perfect cookies should be packed away--sc.r.a.ps never went into the tin box. But for some reason or other, the girls never seemed to mind the job of eating the broken ones! In fact Mary Jane often asked Alice _not_ to be so careful--to please break a few so there would be plenty to eat right then and there.

The day went by so quickly that it was bed time before the girls realized it and then, after about forty winks, it was morning--the morning when grandma and grandpa were coming.

Everybody was up early, Alice and Mary Jane made up the beds fresh and neat, mother cooked a good breakfast and Dadah went to the train, at a near-by suburban station, to meet the travelers. It was a jolly party that sat around the breakfast table--you may be sure of that!

"Now then," said Mr. Merrill, when the breakfast was eaten up and news of the farm had been told, "I'll have to go to work and I suppose grandpa has to do his business to-day, so we'll leave you folks to yourselves. Then to-morrow, if grandpa is through his business, we can plan some fun."

So the two business folks went down town and grandma was left to enjoy life at home. The girls were glad she could stay.

"Let's take grandma over to the lake," suggested Alice, "I know you'd love riding in one of those little electric launches, grandmother."