Mary Jane's City Home

Excerpt

FINDING THE NEW HOME

The late afternoon sunshine sent its slanting, golden rays through the car windows on to the map that Mary Jane and her sister Alice had spread out on the table between the seats of the Pullman in which they were riding.

“And all that wiggly line is water?” Mary Jane was asking.

“Every bit water,” replied their father, who bent over their heads to explain what they were looking at; “a lot of water, you see. You remember I told you that Chicago is right on the edge of Lake Michigan. And Lake Michigan, so far as looks are concerned, might just as well be the ocean you saw down in Florida—it’s so big you can’t see the other side.”

“And does it have big waves?” asked Mary Jane.

“Just you wait and see,” promised Mr. Merrill. “Big waves! I should say it has!”

“And all the green part of the map is parks,” said Alice, quoting what her father had told them when he first showed them the map.

“Then there must be a lot of parks,” suggested Mary Jane with interest. “I think I’d like to live by a park,” she added thoughtfully.

“I think I should too,” agreed Mr. Merrill, “and it’s near a park we will make the first hunt for a home.”

“Oh, look!” cried Mary Jane suddenly as she glanced up from the spread-out map; “what’s that, Dadah?”

“That’s the beginning of Chicago,” said Mr. Merrill. “Let’s fold up the map now and see what we can of the city. This is South Chicago; and those great stacks and flaming chimneys are steel mills and foundries and factories—watch now! There are more!”

The train on which the Merrill family were traveling went dashing past factory after factory—past an occasional open space where they could see in the distance the blue gleam of Lake Michigan and past great wide stretches where tracks and more tracks on which freight cars and engines sped up and down showed them something of the whirling industry that has made South Chicago famous. No wonder it was a strange sight to the two girls—they had never before seen anything that made them even guess the big business that they now saw spread out before them.

They had spent all their lives thus far—Alice was twelve and Mary Jane going on six—in a small city of the Middle West and though they had had a fine summer in the country visiting grandma and grandpa and had only the winter before taken a beautiful trip through Florida, they had never been to a great city. And now they were not going to visit or to take a trip. They were going to live there. The great big city of Chicago was to be their home.

The pretty little house they had loved so well was sold. The furniture and books and dolls and clothes were all packed and loaded on a freight car to follow them to the city and all the dear friends had been given a farewell. Mary Jane had loved the excitement and muss of packing; the great boxes and the masses of crinkly excelsior and the workmen around who always had time for a pleasant joke with an interested little girl....