“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.