The “square” was gay enough to suit even Alice. The lights glowed brilliantly among the palms and bright flowers; the band was playing in a stand nearby and the streets on the four sides were filled with people strolling along or making purchases at the many little shops. The Merrills were happy to find just the sorts of cards they wanted to take home. They bought a whole set—pictures of every place they had been—for Alice and another whole set for Mary Jane to keep.
“I wish I had some to take to my kindergarten, I do,” said Mary Jane as she proudly slipped her set into her own little hand bag; “I’d like to take one picture to each person there.”
“How many are there in your room?” asked Mr. Merrill.
“Let me see,” said Mary Jane, counting out the classes, “there’s ten, and nine, and fifteen, and teachers and—how many is that, Dadah?”
“It’s enough for a whole set of cards,” replied Mr. Merrill; “we’ll get fifty and then there will surely be enough.” Mary Jane slipped the second set into her bag and began making plans that very minute about giving them to Miss Lynn.
That was the very first Mary Jane had thought of home and school since the day she had sent the alligators to Doris, more than a week ago. But now that it had once come to her mind, she found herself thinking of the pleasant kindergarten many times through the next days and making plans for what she would do when she returned home.
Early the next morning the Merrills took the train to St. Augustine and spent a happy day exploring the old fort. The tunnels and dungeons made Mary Jane shiver they were so cold and dark and slimy, but the rooms opening onto the main courtyard—the rooms where the soldiers quartered in the fort had lived—the girls thought were lovely. The walls were covered with great plants of beautiful maiden hair fern, the biggest and loveliest the girls had ever seen. Alice thought it would be no hardship to live there though she did admit it would likely be damp!
At the end of the day they went back to Jacksonville in time to catch the nine o’clock limited for the North.
“Just think,” said Mary Jane as she slipped off her stockings and shoes and tucked them into the little hammock by the window of her berth, “I’m going to ride on this train all this night and all to-morrow and all another night and then I’ll be home!”
“I wonder if it’s snowing up there?” Alice was asking as she too began to undress at the same time; “wouldn’t snow seem funny?”