Uncle Hal met them at the station in Boston and his smiling face assured them a surprise was in store.
"Too tired riding to do a little more?" he asked, as they walked out of the great station.
"Well," asked Mary Jane determined not to be tricked into anything, "is it a nice thing we would do, if we weren't too tired to do it?"
"Very nice, I'd say, my young lady," replied Uncle Hal.
"Then I'm not a bit tired," Mary Jane assured him.
It was a good thing that was her answer, for the surprise was ready and waiting at the station door.
"This is my sister and her two daughters, Miss Burn," said Hal as he stepped up to a waiting car, "and they say they will enjoy the ride you so kindly planned for them." Miss Burn was a charming young lady with whom Mary Jane and Alice promptly made friends, and her car was a beautiful big touring car in which the Merrills were whisked away before they quite realized what had happened to them.
Through the parks of Boston they went, out the boulevards along the north shore where the roadway borders the ocean for miles and miles. Beautiful homes flashed passed them, parks, suburbs, playgrounds, amusement places—all like a wonderful living moving picture show. Mary Jane was interested in the great shoe factories they passed in Lynn and she tried to peek into the windows and see which factory made shoes for little girls her age. Rows and rows of red brick buildings—all shoe factories Uncle Hal told her—seemed enough to make shoes for everybody in the whole country!
On they went till they could see the houses on Marblehead and the famous Marblehead lighthouse that can be seen from such a distance at night, then, back they went, mostly over a different route, toward Boston.
"Couldn't you stop at our house for a cup of tea?" invited Miss Burn, "mother would love to meet you but she didn't feel up to a ride to-day."