But by the afternoon of the third day, her legs began to get a little tired too, and her eyes looked more often to the green of the Midway they occasionally saw and she thought that flats, even empty flats, really should have chairs for folks to sit on. So, as a matter of fact, she wasn’t half as sorry as she had thought she would be, when, on the afternoon of the third day of hunting the Merrill family came across a charming little apartment.
It was on the second floor of a very attractive red brick building; it had five rooms, quite too small, father thought, but then one can’t have everything, they had found, and every room was light and sunny and cheerful. But the part about it that Mary Jane and Alice liked the best was the back porch. To be sure there was a front porch, a pretty, little porch with a stone railing and a view way down the street toward the park and lake. But off the dining room the girls discovered a small balcony that overlooked the back yard next door, a back yard that had a garden laid out and a chicken house and everything so homey and comfortable looking that the girls immediately wanted to sit out and watch.
“I think if we’d stay here maybe some children would come out to play,” suggested Mary Jane in a whisper.
“I think they would, too,” agreed Alice. “And I think if we lived here maybe we could get acquainted and play with them.”
“Let’s live here!” exclaimed Mary Jane and she ran back into the house just at the very minute Mr. and Mrs. Merrill decided to rent the apartment.
“So you think you’ll like it, do you?” said Mrs. Merrill, smiling; “the rooms are pretty small.”
“I know we’ll love it,” said Alice eagerly, “and you should see the back porch.”
But Mr. Merrill laughed when they showed him the porch.
“Do you call this a porch,” he exclaimed, “why it’s not half big enough for a porch! I’d call it a balcony.”
“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Merrill, “and then when you watch folks in the yard down there,—for you are planning to watch and get acquainted, aren’t you?—then you can pretend that this is your balcony seat and that the folks down there are in a play for you—wouldn’t that be fun?”