of many nice
times in that friendly back yard.

VISITING WITH BETTY

Three days of hard work for everybody and then the little flat into which
the Merrills had moved began to look like a real home. The unpacking was
all done and the rubbish cleared away; the furniture was polished and set
in place; the closets were in order and every cupboard and shelf held just
the right things for comfort. It wasn't such an easy matter to stow away
all the things the Merrills had used in their pretty house--the five room
apartment was much smaller than the house of course--but with everybody's
help the job was done.

"Now then," said Mrs. Merrill, happily, in the late afternoon of the third
day, "if you'll run the rods in these curtains, Mary Jane, I'll hang them
up where they belong and then we'll all three go to market and then--guess
what? We'll have dinner in our own new home!"

Mary Jane thought that would be fun, for, much as she loved eating in the
hotel where they had been living while getting the new home fixed, she
liked better to eat her mother's cooking. So it was a very happy little
girl who slipped the rods into the living room curtains and then put on
her hat and hunted up the market basket from the pantry.

Now many times before this, Mary Jane had been marketing with her mother.
But never had she been to such a market! Before, marketing meant going to
the grocery store about three blocks from their home; it meant talking to
the very interested and friendly grocer who had known Mary Jane ever since
she first appeared at the grocery in her big, well-covered cab--she was
then about two months old; it meant telling Mr. Shover, the grocer, just
what they wanted and picking out the sorts of things they liked best. But
marketing in Chicago was very different. In the first place there wasn't a
person around they had ever seen before; and then everything was so big
and there was so much food. Mary Jane thought there couldn't possibly be
enough folks in Chicago to eat all those good things! But when she and her
mother actually got into the store and began to buy, Mary Jane forgot all
about the strangeness and remembered only the fun. For they didn't get
somebody to wait on them as they used to at Mr. Shover's--not at all! They
waited on themselves! They went through a little turnstile and then
wandered around among the good things all by themselves and they took down
from the well-stocked shelves anything they want