“We’ll make crowns out of orange leaves,” said Alice, quickly picking a few and weaving them together; “see how pretty and glossy they are. Just put them on your head this way, Katherine. There! That’s becoming! Now you make a bigger one and I’ll do one for Mary Jane and for me. You girls pick the leaves for me so I can make them quickly.”
“Then if we’re queens we shouldn’t live in a house, should we?” asked Katherine.
“I should say not!” exclaimed Mary Jane. “These aren’t houses,” she added, waving her hand grandly toward the trees nearest at hand; “these are palaces—your palace and Alice’s palace and mine. And that big one over there we were going to have be a hotel, it’s a banquet hall now.”
Just as the royal play was getting well under way a man came around with paper bags. “Put all the fruit you want to buy in these,” he announced, “and pay for it at the dock when you get aboard the boat.”
“Let’s not bother,” said Katherine; “we don’t want to stop playing.”
“We don’t have to,” replied Alice laughingly, and she picked up the bag the man had laid under her tree; “these are cloth of gold sacks and we’ll fill them with gold nuggets to take to the good queen mother.”
“Why, so we can!” cried Katherine happily; “come on, let’s hurry and get a lot!”
It was a good thing they did hurry for even so the boat’s great whistle sounded before the bags were full and the captain’s call through a megaphone urged them to hurry aboard.
“Well, seems to me you don’t intend to be hungry for a few days,” said Mrs. Merrill laughingly as she saw what full bags the children were carrying. “I thought you were too busy playing to pick any and so I got enough for us all. But never mind,” she added, as she saw the girls were looking disappointed; “it’s all so good and it’s wholesome eating too, so we’ll keep it if you don’t mind carrying it.”
The rest of that day’s wonderful ride seemed to Mary Jane like living in a picture show. Not long after they left the orange orchard the great boat turned into the tiny Clear River that runs into the Ocklawaha and it almost seemed as if the broad decks were spreading over the whole of the little stream! Here the water was clear as crystal and the girls could see every fish and turtle and water snake that scurried out of their way as they steamed up stream. In the bright noon sunshine they came into the little lake at the head of the stream and there they got out of the big boat and were rowed around in a small glass bottomed boat. It seemed awfully queer to look through the glass at their feet and see the bubbling of the hidden springs and to watch the bright colored pebbles and stones that tumbled about deep down among the rocks like gay pieces of confetti tossed about in the sunshine.