"I think they'll charge excess baggage for you, young lady," laughed John's father as he lifted Mary Jane into her place by John. "You're not going to take all those stones back to Chicago, are you?"
"Well," began Mary Jane, and then she saw how impossible it would be to carry so many so she decided, "I'm going to take two, the roundest, whitest two, and I'm going to leave the others for John. You'll like 'em, won't you, John?"
John hadn't an idea what he would do with stones but he was always glad to acquire valuable possessions, so he answered, "You bet!" most vigorously, and Mary Jane was happy.
Back at the house, John rushed upstairs ahead of the girls and they couldn't imagine the reason for his hurry—children don't usually like to go to bed in a rush like that, at least the Merrill girls didn't.
But when, a few minutes later, they leisurely went up, they found the reason for his hurry. He met them at the top of the stairs and offered to each girl a pair of his own pajamas! He remembered that his mother had promised night things and he wanted to be a good host. The girls looked with dismay at the cunning little blue pajamas offered them, but their mother came to their rescue.
"Thank you so much, John," she said to the little boy, "you certainly were nice to plan for the girls. Now, don't you want to show us your room? You know you promised you would." And John, carelessly handing over the pajamas, hurried off to display the room of which he was so proud.
A few minutes later the tired little fellow was sound asleep, and then Cousin Louise brought her guests a supply of night things that made them very comfortable.
"I wish I didn't have to go to bed," sighed Mary Jane as she trailed the length of her cousin's pretty gown over the floor. "I think it's horrid when you have a big lady's nighty and it's so long and pretty and like a court dress that then you just have to go to bed and sleep!"
"Well, if you don't go to bed pretty soon," laughed Cousin Louise, "you'll hear my alarm clock and John's roosters before you get to sleep."
But there was no real danger of that because Mary Jane was so tired that the minute her head touched the pillow she was sound asleep and dreaming of white stones that perched up on top of Plymouth Rock and of a dear woolly lamb that came over in the Mayflower.