they went into the hotel, “you and Alice may come out onto this nice porch and watch the children play on the Midway and get a little run before dinner.”

You may be sure that with that promise before her, Mary Jane didn’t take very long to primp. She had spied a group of children about her age, who seemed to be having a beautiful time playing ball out there on the grass and she couldn’t help noticing that they played just as she and Doris did and she couldn’t help wishing that she too, even though she was a new little girl just come to town, could play with them. So she stood very still while Mrs. Merrill tied the fresh hair bow and slipped on a clean frock and then, holding tight to big sister Alice’s friendly hand she went down the one flight of stairs—she was in far too big a hurry to wait for the elevator—and out onto the long roomy porch.

Just across the narrow street in front of the hotel and on the nearest bit of parkway, three little girls about Mary Jane’s age were still playing ball. One was dainty and small and had yellow curls; one was rather tall and had long straight dark hair and the third had dark, straight hair bobbed short, and snapping black eyes.

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” said Mary Jane as she looked at them wistfully, “if I’d get to know those girls and they’d be friends. If I did,” she added, “I think she’d be my mostest friend,” and Mary Jane pointed to the little girl with the dark, bobbed hair.

While they watched and were trying to get up courage to go over and play too, a pretty girl about Alice’s age came along the street. Her hair was copper colored and curly and very, very pretty. And her smile when she saw the little girls who were playing, made her seem so friendly and “homey.”

“I’ve been hunting you, Betty,” she said to the little girl Mary Jane liked best. “It’s time to come home for dinner.”

So the four girls, three little folks and one bigger one, went around the corner toward home, and two strangers, standing on the porch, watched them till they were quite out of sight.

“It would be funny,” said Alice, “if we’d ever get to know them. I’m sure I’d like to.”

“Wouldn’t it though!” exclaimed Mary Jane. “I hope we do!”

And all the time they were eating their first dinner in Chicago, and telling mother and father about the children they had seen and making plans about what to do to-morrow, they were thinking about those two girls and wishing to know them better.

Little did they guess what would really truly happen before the week was over!

Three whole days of flat hunting! And of all the fun she had ever had in her more than five years of life, Mary Jane thought flat hunting in Chicago was the most fun of all! She loved the mystery of each new apartment; the guessing which room might be hers and which mother’s; the hunting up the door bell and hearing its sound (for as you very well know each door bell has a sound of its own); the poking into closets and pantries and porches. It was the most delightful sort of exploring she had ever come across and she couldn’t at all understand why mother and father got tired and somewhat discouraged. For her part Mary Jane was tempted to wish that they would never find a flat, well hardly that; but that finding the right one would take a long, oh, a very long time!

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?”

The girls thought it would, but there was so much to plan and think about that they didn’t stay on their little balcony any longer just then, which was something of a pity, for right after they went indoors, somebody came out into the yard— But then, there’s no use telling about her for Mary Jane didn’t see her.

So Mary Jane and Alice went with their father and mother into the room that was to be theirs and they planned just where each bed should be and where was the best place for the desk and dressing table and who should have which side of the closet. And by that time, it was nearly six o’clock—time to go back to the hotel for dinner.

Mr. Merrill stopped at the desk for mail as they went up to their room and there he found a message telling him that their furniture had arrived in Chicago and that it must be taken out of the freight house the next morning.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Merrill with a gasp of dismay, “I think it’s a good thing we found that flat! What ever would we have done if we hadn’t! Well, girls, I think we’d better eat a good dinner and then go to bed early for we’ll have to get down there and clean up the flat while father tends to getting our things delivered.”

So bright and early the next morning everybody started to work. Mr. Merrill went down town to meet the moving men he had engaged by ’phone and Mrs. Merrill and the two girls put aprons and cleaning rags and soap, all of which they had brought in their small trunk, into a little grip and went down to the new home.

Mary Jane had lots of fun that morning. First she went down to the basement and borrowed a broom from the janitor. Then she went back for clean papers which she folded neatly and spread on the pantry shelves which Mrs. Merrill with the good help of the janitor’s wife had cleaned