thought," began Mrs. Merrill, and then she hesitated.

"Something nice?" asked Alice, encouragingly.

"It would have been nice," admitted Mrs. Merrill, "but likely we couldn't
do it. I'd been thinking how pleasant it would be to take another trip
this summer. You know how you girls enjoyed going to Florida. And you
remember Uncle Hal graduates from Harvard this June. I had been wondering
if we could go east in time to be there when the festivities are going
on."

"Oh, mother!" cried Mary Jane, "what fun! I do want to ride on a train, a
big train with a sleeper and a diner! But then I want to dig, too," she
added, insistently.

"Then we'll take one thing at a time," suggested Mr. Merrill. "We'll look
into the question of a summer home--we know we'd all like that. And you
folks don't know that a very popular uncle would _want_ a grown up sister
and two small nieces hanging around at commencement time," he added
teasingly.

"How do you find a summer home?" asked Alice thoughtfully.

"That's what we'll have to discover," laughed Mr. Merrill. "And we'll
begin this very Saturday afternoon if the weather is fine. We'll take a
suburban train and ride till we see a place that looks homey and there
we'll get off and hunt."

The next Saturday was warm and sunny, the kind of a day for bringing
flowers into bloom and for making little girls want to play out of doors.
Mrs. Merrill and the girls met Mr. Merrill at his office so as not to lose
a minute's time, and they hurried right over to the station, and got
aboard the first suburban train they could find.

"I think this is lots of fun," said Mary Jane as they found their seats,
"we don't know where we're going--we're just going!" And the train was
off.

For some time the girls were really discouraged. They passed factories,
and tenements, and more factories till Mary Jane was sure they were never
coming to country--real country. But suddenly, when she was about to give
up, the factories were gone and from the window the girls could see wide
fields and strips of woods and an occasional brook. Two or three little
stations were passed and then the train ran through a beautiful stretch of
woods--rolling woods all leafy and budding and flower decked. The ground
was fairly covered with early blossoms and trees of wild crab were just
bursting into pink bloom.

Mary Jane grabbed her coat and started down the aisle.

"Make 'em stop the train, Dadah," she said, "this is where we