“We can hang the cards all around the room at the edge of the board,” she said, going to her desk to get the box of hangers; “and then as we march around and look at them, you can tell us about each picture.”
Mary Jane and pretty Miss Amerion, the assistant, set busily to work and by the time the bell rang a few minutes later all the pictures were hung in place. It was lots of fun to march around the room at the head of the class and tell interesting things about the pictures. She told about the fire on the boat and about riding the ponies and seeing the queer stoves in the orange orchard and everything she could think of. And she didn’t wonder a bit that the boys and girls (and teachers too) laughed when she told them about their wild ride in the auto in chase of a boat.
“What did you think was the strangest thing you saw, Mary Jane?” asked Miss Lynn when Mary Jane had finished.
“Well—” Mary Jane hesitated. She thought quickly of the jelly fish, the chameleon, the queer sword fish she had seen swimming in Clear River, but none of those seemed quite as queer as the big old alligators that looked so like logs.
“I think the alligators were the queerest,” she said decidedly, and she told how she had been fooled into thinking one was a real log.
Then suddenly she happened to think. “I sent Doris an alligator. I sent her two of ’em. Couldn’t she bring them to school so everybody could see? They were just baby ones of course, but they were funny all the same.”
The whole school looked over to Doris and saw the poor little girl flushed with embarrassment and hanging her head.
“Have you got them, dear?” asked Miss Lynn encouragingly; “maybe we could wrap them up warm and snug and bring them to school to-morrow.”
“Well, you see—” Doris hesitated and then blurted out suddenly, “we had ’em two days and then they both crawled down the register and they haven’t ever come back—not yet they haven’t.”
“They must have thought this country too cold,” said Miss Lynn; “but don’t you worry. We’ve nice pictures to look at and if the alligators ever come back you can bring them to us then.” And Doris was comforted.