fun.

It was Monday when Mark and Ruth walked home from the post-office
together, reading the paper, for which they had gone every Monday
evening since they could remember, and they were to leave home and
begin their journey on the following morning.

During the past week Mr. Elmer had resigned his position in the bank,
sold the dear little house which had been a home to him and his wife
ever since they were married, and in which their children had been
born, and with a heavy heart made the preparations for departure.

With the willing aid of kind neighbors Mrs. Elmer had packed what
furniture they were to take with them, and it had been sent to Bangor.
Mark and Ruth had not left school until Friday, and had been made young
lions of all the week by the other children. To all of her girl friends
Ruth had promised to write every single thing that happened, and Mark
had promised so many alligator teeth, and other trophies of the chase,
that, if he kept all his promises, there would be a decided advance in
the value of Florida curiosities that winter.

As the little house was stripped of all its furniture, except some few
things that had been sold with it, they were all to go to Dr. Wing's to
sleep that night, and Mrs. Wing had almost felt hurt that they would
not take tea with her; but both Mr. and Mrs. Elmer wanted to take this
last meal in their own home, and persuaded her to let them have their
way. The good woman must have sent over most of the supper she had
intended them to eat with her, and this, together with the good things
sent in by other neighbors, so loaded the table that Mark declared it
looked like a regular surprise-party supper.

A surprise-party it proved to be, sure enough, for early in the evening
neighbors and friends began to drop in to say good-bye, until the lower
rooms of the little house were filled. As the chairs were all gone,
they sat on trunks, boxes, and on the kitchen table, or stood up.

Mark and Ruth had their own party, too, right in among the grown
people; for most of the boys and girls of the village had come with
their parents to say good-bye, and many of them had brought little
gifts that they urged the young Elmers to take with them as keepsakes.
Of all these none pleased Ruth so much as the album, filled with the
pictures of her school-girl friends, that Edna May brought her.

Edna was the adopted daughter of Captain Bill May, who had brought her
home from one of his voyages