For two months after they came home from Florida, Mary Jane went to kindergarten and played with her little friends and helped about the house just as she had loved to do before they went away for those wonderful two weeks. The piled up snows of winter melted into little dirty piles that finally slipped off into the ground without anybody noticing when they went. The buds on the lilac bush began to swell and two gay robins appeared in the garden to announce that spring was coming.
One warm noon time Mary Jane stopped on the front steps to make into a chain the first gay dandelions of the season she had picked on the way home from school.
“See, Dadah!” she exclaimed to her father as he came up the walk, “I got seven and I making them into a chain for mother—won’t she be pleased?”
“Indeed she will,” replied Mr. Merrill, but Mary Jane noticed that his voice sounded as though he was thinking of something else. “Do you like it so very well here, Mary Jane?” he asked and he waved his hand out toward the yard.
“Why yes, Dadah,” replied Mary Jane, puzzled at his manner, “don’t you?”
“Of course,” said Mr. Merrill, “but would you like to live somewhere else, do you think?”
Mary Jane looked out over the pretty front yard, where the grass was so green and the crocuses were peeking up here and there. “Well,” she said, “I like it here and I don’t know what you mean. But I think I’d like it anywhere you and mother and Alice were.”
“That’s my girl!” exclaimed her father as he hugged her close. “Come here, folks,” he added as Alice came up the walk just then and Mrs. Merrill opened the door to greet them; “I’ll tell you the news.” He pulled a yellow telegram from his pocket. “See that? That means new work and a promotion. And it means that we move to Chicago.”
“Leave here?” exclaimed Mrs. Merrill.
“Leave here inside of a month,” he replied. “Leave here and live in the big city.”