"Oh, aren't we, though!" cried Mollie. "Just try me. I've always wanted chicken fried in the Southern style."
"You'll get it here," said Mr. Stonington.
Let us pass over that first meal—something that the girls did not do by any means—but the mere details of our friends arriving, getting settled, and then of resting to enjoy life as they had never enjoyed it before, can have little of interest to the reader. So, as I said, let us pass over a few days.
Each one, it is true, brought something new and of peculiar interest to the girls, but it was only because they had never before been in Florida. To the residents it was all an old story—even the picking of oranges.
The grove was near a beautiful stream, not such a river as was the Argono of Deepdale, but broader, more shallow and sluggish.
"I wonder if there are alligators in it?" asked Betty, of one of the pickers.
"Not around here," he answered. "You have to go into the bayous, or swamps, for them critters. Don't yo'all worry 'bout the 'gators."
"We won't when we get in the Gem," said Betty. "I wonder when they will bring her up and launch her?"
"Let's go to the depot and find out," suggested Amy. "We can have a carriage and team with a driver any time we want it, Uncle Stonington said."
At the freight office the boat was promised to them for the following day, but it was two before this promise was kept.