Turning from the main road, they drove into the heart of a charming wood where Cousin Louise had them get out to see the wild flowers. There the girls saw, for the first time, the beautiful and very rare wild lady slipper which Alice thought was the loveliest wild flower she had ever seen. They didn’t pick a single blossom as the flower is so rare that flower lovers will not take a single bloom from its home in the woods; but they looked at it so admiringly and so carefully that the girls were sure they never, never would forget its beauty. Back into the car and around a couple of low hills they saw before them—the ocean—golden and blue and rosy as the varying lights of sunset were reflected in it. "Oh," cried Mary Jane, "are we going swimming?" "Not this late in the evening, I’m afraid, my dear," said Cousin Louise. "But perhaps mother will let you go in wading. We always carry towels in the back of the car for a good foot rub afterward." Mrs. Merrill approved, so the three children pulled off shoes and stockings and a minute later were dashing down toward the water leaving the grown-ups for a quiet visit near the car. "Oh, look at the white stones!" exclaimed Mary Jane, as they wandered around on the beach after the first hilarious fun of wading. "I’m going to put some in my pocket. There’s one. There’s another. See, John, aren’t they pretty?" John agreed and was so diligent in helping to pick them up and so generous in handing over all he could find to Mary Jane, that by the time the children were called to come and dry their feet, Mary Jane’s pockets were loaded down and Alice’s were full of the overflow. "I think they’ll charge excess baggage for you, young lady," laughed John’s father as he lifted Mary Jane into her place by John. "You’re not going to take all those stones back to Chicago, are you?" "Well," began Mary Jane, and then she saw how impossible it would be to carry so many so she decided, "I’m going to take two, the roundest, whitest two, and I’m going to leave the others for John. You’ll like ’em, won’t you, John?" John hadn’t an idea what he would do with stones but he was always glad to acquire valuable possessions, so he answered, "You bet!" most vigorously, and Mary Jane was happy. Back at the house, John rushed upstairs ahead of the girls and they couldn’t imagine the reason for his hurry—children don’t usually like to go to bed in a rush like that, at least the Merrill girls didn’t. But when, a few minutes later, they leisurely went up, they found the reason for his hurry. He met them at the top of the stairs and offered to each girl a pair of his own pajamas! He remembered that his mother had promised night things and he wanted to be a good host. The girls looked with dismay at the cunning little blue pajamas offered them, but their mother came to their rescue.