New England -- Description and travel -- Juvenile fiction
"Oh, I just love it here!" whispered Mary Jane as they walked down the
broad marble staircase. "Doesn’t it make you feel like a princess in
your own castle? I can just see my subjects walking behind holding up
my train and thinking how grand and lovely I look."
"Seems to me a good many things make you feel ’like a princess,’" said
Mrs. Merrill smilingly, "the swan boats and now the marble stairs of the
library."
"Well, I guess Boston must be a princess-y sort of a place," replied
Mary Jane, "’cause I never felt that way in Chicago. I like Boston. I
like Chicago too," she added loyally, "but Boston is more princess-y
feeling."
They crossed the Square and hurried up to their room to dress. The
girls were to wear the dainty little organdies they had worn on Class
Day. Mrs. Merrill had had them pressed and when the girls stepped into
the room there they were on the beds—as fresh and crisp as new. And now
that the new shoes were fixed with a soft pad of leather at the heel to
keep them from slipping up and down and making a blister, there was
nothing likely to mar the day.
It didn’t take long to dress as everything was laid out ready, and soon
the three Merrills were in the subway, dashing out to meet Uncle Hal at
Harvard Square. There wasn’t much time for visiting; and anyway, Mary
Jane didn’t feel much like visiting just "common-like" with a
queer-looking uncle who wore a long black dress and had a funny pointed
cap on his head. Her mother explained that it was a "gown" not a dress,
and that all the students who graduated that day and all the men of the
university wore them. Mary Jane had, of course, seen a good many of
them on Class Day but she couldn’t get used to her own Uncle Hal having
such a funny gown.
They all went over toward the Stadium together, and as they stepped upon
the bridge across the Charles River, Uncle Hal picked her up and set her
on his shoulder while Mrs. Merrill took a picture of them.
"There now," said Hal as he set her down again, "if anybody ever doubts
that you came to my commencement they can just look at that! There’s the
Charles River in it and the Stadium in the background and you and I in
front—if we didn’t break the camera."
In the row in front of them, in the Stadium, sat Hal’s friends, Mr. and
Mrs. Humphrey. Alice and Mary Jane had never met them before, though
Mrs. Merrill had known them some time.
"I’m so sorry you’ve been here all these days and we’ve been away,"
exclaimed Mrs. Humphrey, as the Merrills were seated. "We just got in
this morning. I’m wondering if you and these nice girls wouldn’t like
to go for a drive this afternoon? Have you been down on the south
shore? Toward Nantasket?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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