"You've never been to the Falls?" Mrs. Jackson asked. "I'm glad Katharine is to have the pleasure of showing them to you first. I wish I could go with you but I have an engagement this morning that I can't put off, so Gretchen is going to take you."
"Gretchen is like your Mary," explained Katharine. "She used to be my nurse. I don't ever remember Gretchen's not being with us."
Gretchen proved to be a large, comfortable looking German woman of forty and the Ethels liked her at once. They went by trolley to the Falls.
"It takes a little longer," Mrs. Jackson said, "but if you're like me you'll enjoy seeing a new bit of country and you can do it better from the electric car than from the steam train."
It was a wonderful day for all the girls. The Mortons enjoyed all the new sights and were not ashamed to express their delight; and Katharine, although she had taken many guests on this same trip, took pleasure in seeing their pleasure.
Their first stop was before they reached the city of Niagara Falls.
"What is this big place?" asked Ethel Brown.
"They make use of the power of the water to run factories and to light towns," explained Katharine. "You see those wheels lying flat on their sides?"
She pointed down into a deep shaft whose dripping walls sent a chill up to the onlookers.
"Those are turbines," Katharine went on. "The water from the river is racing along outside not doing any good in the world except to look exciting, so they let some of it flow in through those openings way down there and it turns these turbines and they make machinery go."