“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.