“I’ve been hunting you, Betty,” she said to the little girl Mary Jane liked best. “It’s time to come home for dinner.”
So the four girls, three little folks and one bigger one, went around the corner toward home, and two strangers, standing on the porch, watched them till they were quite out of sight.
“It would be funny,” said Alice, “if we’d ever get to know them. I’m sure I’d like to.”
“Wouldn’t it though!” exclaimed Mary Jane. “I hope we do!”
And all the time they were eating their first dinner in Chicago, and telling mother and father about the children they had seen and making plans about what to do to-morrow, they were thinking about those two girls and wishing to know them better.
Little did they guess what would really truly happen before the week was over!
THE FOLKS AROUND THE CORNER
Three whole days of flat hunting! And of all the fun she had ever had in her more than five years of life, Mary Jane thought flat hunting in Chicago was the most fun of all! She loved the mystery of each new apartment; the guessing which room might be hers and which mother’s; the hunting up the door bell and hearing its sound (for as you very well know each door bell has a sound of its own); the poking into closets and pantries and porches. It was the most delightful sort of exploring she had ever come across and she couldn’t at all understand why mother and father got tired and somewhat discouraged. For her part Mary Jane was tempted to wish that they would never find a flat, well hardly that; but that finding the right one would take a long, oh, a very long time!