They stepped off the train, walked down some stairs and found themselves on the sidewalk of a very busy street. Overhead the noise of their own train rumbling cityward made a terrific din; and as though that were not enough, still higher up the great elevated car line made a rumble and roar. Mary Jane craned her neck as they walked from under the trains and there high in the air, she saw street cars running along as though street cars always had and always would, run on tracks high up in the air!
“Can we ride on it, Dadah?” she shouted to her father, “are we going to ride on that train up on stilts?”
Mr. Merrill shook his head laughingly and hurried them into a waiting taxi.
“We’re not going to ride there to-day,” he explained when the door of the car shut out some of the noise, “but some day soon we’ll take a long ride on the elevated and then you can see all the back yards and back porches and parks and streets and everything about the city, just as plain as plain can be.”
While he was talking, the Merrills drove through streets lined on both sides with three-story apartment buildings. But before Mary Jane had time to ask a question or even think what she would like to say, they whisked around a corner and out into the beautiful wide driveway on the Midway—the long, green parkway that stretched, or so it seemed to Mary Jane, for miles in both directions. The taxi pulled up in front of a comfortable looking hotel right on the side of the park and Mary Jane wasn’t a bit sorry to get out and take a breath of fresh air and look at the lovely view before her.
“Now just as soon as you are washed up,” said Mrs. Merrill, briskly, as they went into the hotel, “you and Alice may come out onto this nice porch and watch the children play on the Midway and get a little run before dinner.”
You may be sure that with that promise before her, Mary Jane didn’t take very long to primp. She had spied a group of children about her age, who seemed to be having a beautiful time playing ball out there on the grass and she couldn’t help noticing that they played just as she and Doris did and she couldn’t help wishing that she too, even though she was a new little girl just come to town, could play with them. So she stood very still while Mrs. Merrill tied the fresh hair bow and slipped on a clean frock and then, holding tight to big sister Alice’s friendly hand she went down the one flight of stairs—she was in far too big a hurry to wait for the elevator—and out onto the long roomy porch.
Just across the narrow street in front of the hotel and on the nearest bit of parkway, three little girls about Mary Jane’s age were still playing ball. One was dainty and small and had yellow curls; one was rather tall and had long straight dark hair and the third had dark, straight hair bobbed short, and snapping black eyes.
“Wouldn’t it be funny,” said Mary Jane as she looked at them wistfully, “if I’d get to know those girls and they’d be friends. If I did,” she added, “I think she’d be my mostest friend,” and Mary Jane pointed to the little girl with the dark, bobbed hair.
While they watched and were trying to get up courage to go over and play too, a pretty girl about Alice’s age came along the street. Her hair was copper colored and curly and very, very pretty. And her smile when she saw the little girls who were playing, made her seem so friendly and “homey.”