Читать книгу Mary Jane in France - Clara Ingram Judson - Страница 3

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Mary Jane’s last evening in London was a whirl of fun and preparations. The Merrills had taken the tea train down from Oxford and the excellent English tea that they enjoyed while speeding southward refreshed them so that when they arrived at the Euston Station in London they were not at all tired. That was lucky, for there was still much to enjoy on this busy day.

The readers who have followed Mary Jane’s journey with her sister Alice and her father and mother, will remember that the Merrill family had been traveling in Scotland and that after a fine time in that beautiful country, they came to London by way of the lake region. There they stopped several times visiting sights and enjoying the charming country. Their last stop was at Bowness on Lake Windermere where they stayed at the interesting Riggs Crown Hotel and had such good times with their new friends, the Wilson family.

The morning of this very day when our book begins, the Merrills had said good-by to Margery, Joan and Dick Wilson and set out for Chester, Oxford and London. If you think that it isn’t possible to visit two places in one day and arrive at the third in time for dinner, you simply don’t know the Merrills and England. They did all of that and enjoyed every minute. They saw the famous “Rows” at Chester, walked on the old wall, explored the Cathedral and then took the train for Oxford. There they drove in and out and round about the old university town; they walked thru gardens and cloisters, and had an excellent luncheon at a small inn near the university. Then they took the tea train for London much wiser than when they set out in the morning and eager to discuss plans for going to France the next day.

“What’s your favorite thing to do in London?” asked Alice, as they drove from the station to the Victoria Hotel.

Mary Jane thought carefully. There were so many favorite things that a person couldn’t say just off hand, which was the real favorite. Riding on the buses, walking along the Mall, watching the sights at Trafalgar Square, strolling along the busy Strand, doing the shops—oh, dear, so many good times in London went racing thru her mind that she couldn’t decide for thinking about them. “What’s yours?” she asked her sister.

“I think I like best to walk down Whitehall and see the Parliament Buildings and the river and bridges,” said Alice. “I like to shop, but it’s closing time now and anyway, Westminster Abbey and the Parliament Buildings seem to me the most London-ish of anything we can do.”

“Then I choose to walk along the Mall and see Buckingham Palace,” decided Mary Jane, “and if you’ll walk with me, I’ll walk with you and between us we’ll see it all.”

“If anyone asks me,” remarked Mr. Merrill——

“I was just going to,” interrupted Alice, eagerly.

“I know what I’ll choose,” laughed Mr. Merrill, teasingly. “I shall choose to stop at the travel bureau office and get our mail.”

“How shall we ever do all that!” exclaimed Mary Jane, for it didn’t seem possible to do that, too.

“And if anyone asks me,” said her mother, adding to the list, “I shall go straight to the hotel and wash stockings and gloves, for I don’t intend to arrive in France with any left-over chores, so there!”

The girls stared at each other in a second’s dismay. Then Alice suddenly remarked, “None of that takes long and if we plan, we can do it all. I’ll help wash the stockings while Daddah gets the mail and then we can all go for a walk together.”

“And what shall I do?” asked Mary Jane.

“You unpack our night things, because you unpack so well,” suggested Mrs. Merrill; “only don’t unpack a single thing we don’t really have to have, because we don’t want to be packing them up again in the morning.”

At that minute their taxi turned into Northumberland Avenue and in a jiffy they found themselves being handed out by the very lordly doorman at the Victoria Hotel. A few minutes later they were in their rooms, feeling very much at home to be back and very experienced as compared to when they first arrived, a few weeks before. It was fortunate that they planned just what to do, for, without plans, Mary Jane might have been tempted to stay at the windows. She loved leaning out on the broad sill, so big and broad that a person didn’t have to even think about falling out but could look and look at the interesting sights one could glimpse on the square. As it was, she took one quick look and then set to her unpacking, while Alice slipped off her traveling dress and drew the warm water and Mrs. Merrill rang for a bath and ordered their trunk sent up. It had been kept there in storage while they were traveling in Scotland.

In half an hour, the gloves and stockings were hanging, clean as could be, on the tiny line Alice carried in her luggage. The workers had had quick and refreshing tubs and the trunk was set up in the larger room, opened and its contents found to be in perfect condition.

“Well, that’s what I call quick work,” approved Mr. Merrill as he entered with a handful of mail. “And it looks to me as tho we were going to have time to do whatever you like the rest of the evening. Are you hungry yet?”

“Well, not quite,” said Mary Jane, hesitatingly.

“Could you walk first?” he asked.

“Oh, of course we can,” said Alice. “Why, Mary Jane, you had tea enough to last till eight o’clock!”

Mary Jane grinned. That tea on the train had been good and it’s true there wasn’t much of it left over when she finished.

“Then let’s go now and walk,” suggested Mr. Merrill. “We can walk down Whitehall to Westminster; back and through Downing Street and to Buckingham Palace and then, if it’s getting late, we can pick up a cab on the Mall and ride to Simpson’s and take our time for dinner. While if we eat first, we must hurry in order to do our walking by daylight.”

It was agreed that the walking first was a fine plan, so there was a scramble into street frocks while Mr. Merrill made himself tidy and off they started. The walk was one long time of “Do you remember this?” and “Didn’t we have fun there?” and the girls felt as tho they were seeing very familiar scenes. That’s the fun of seeing again some place where you have already been. Compared with the new scenes, anything one has seen before seems like an old friend, almost like home. The evening was perfect for walking, not too hot nor too cold and the July sunshine lingered till they were well along on the Mall, leaving Buckingham Palace behind them.

Suddenly Mr. Merrill noticed that Mary Jane was falling behind and that she looked more tired than he liked to see, so he quickly hailed a passing taxi and a few minutes later they were at Simpson’s ordering their dinner.

But really, a little girl who has seen two towns in one day and has taken her favorite walk in London on top of all that, is too tired to remember much about the evening. So, altho of course she knew her father put her into a cab to go to the hotel; and tho she knew she must have undressed to get into bed, she really didn’t remember anything about it and she slept so soundly that she didn’t even dream about going to France as she had fully intended to do.

Next morning Mrs. Merrill was up bright and early as there was much to be done. The heavy clothing used in Scotland was packed in the trunk and light summer things, such as they would need for France, were put in the hand bags. Letters were sent off to home folk and everything was put in ship-shape order for the journey. So that when the girls were called at eight there was just enough left to do to be exciting and comfortable.

At ten, the man from the travel bureau arrived to escort them to Victoria Station. The boat train didn’t leave till eleven, but luggage must be registered thru to Paris, and various governmental regulations attended to, so it was best to have plenty of time.

While the grownups looked after baggage and tickets, Alice and Mary Jane kept the smaller pieces of hand luggage and amused themselves by watching the busy whirl about them. Among the many people coming and going, they saw several whom they had seen on shipboard or during their travels in England and Scotland, and it almost seemed that they were old friends (even tho a person didn’t even know their names) so pleasant was the sight of a familiar face in the confusion of hundreds of strangers. But there wasn’t anyone the girls really knew, so they guarded the bags (a rather unnecessary job, in a way, for thieving didn’t appear to be popular in England) and watched the crowds.

Baggage was carried about on curious trucks and important looking men went here and there, directing passengers, stamping luggage and settling questions that seemed to arise all the time. Just as the girls were beginning to get tired watching, Mr. Merrill came for them and took them onto the boat train where Mrs. Merrill was already seated, and very soon the train pulled out for Dover.

“Will we go on a big boat?” asked Mary Jane, when the sights of London were long passed and she had a chance to think about where they were going.

“Oh, no,” her father assured her. “The channel boats are very small, I understand, but we won’t be on one long—only about an hour and a half, I think, so it will seem more like taking a little trip on Lake Michigan than going on an ocean.”

“Where is Dover, Daddah?” asked Alice. “We haven’t looked at a map for a whole day!”

As the time was short, Mr. Merrill got out his little pocket map and showed the girls just where they were at that minute—speeding southeast from London—and just where the port of Dover is located. Hardly had they finished looking at the map before the train pulled into Dover and there they were! They had expected rush and confusion, but instead everyone went about his or her business in a quiet and orderly fashion and very quickly they were up on deck, their luggage safe beside them. And in a very few minutes they were off.

But the crowds on board kept coming up and coming up from the lower deck, even tho the boat had started, till there were so many that there weren’t chairs enough to go around, and one didn’t dare leave to explore the boat lest one’s chair be taken. Mary Jane and Alice were disappointed at that for they loved to explore, but they needn’t have worried. People walked up and down and around the decks and more sights went right by the two girls than they could have seen walking around. For the most interesting part of a channel trip is not the boat, which is quite small and ordinary, but the people aboard. There were people from many countries, Italy, Spain, Germany, Norway, Africa and far-away India, mixed in with plenty of English and Americans, and as several of the Africans, a small group of Indians and two Japanese wore their native costume, the boat deck seemed like a stage with people in dressup clothes walking about.

Mr. Merrill bade the girls look back at England they were leaving and see the great white cliffs of chalk and both Mary Jane and Alice looked obediently, but they weren’t really much interested, for people, such a motley array of people, were much more fun to see than chalk cliffs.

“I wonder what it will be like in France compared with this boat,” said Alice after she had watched with interest the two dignified Japanese who were walking up and down the deck. “Pretty tame, I imagine, after all this,” she added for she had not the faintest idea what arriving in France would be like.

“I don’t wonder about France just now,” whispered Mary Jane with a sigh. “What I want to know is how we can see everything and not stare—and you know, Alice, staring really isn’t nice. They’re such story-booky looking people. Why, Alice, this is lots more fun—on account of the people—than the big ocean boat.”

“I’m going to put down in my notebook all the people I’ve seen,” said Alice, “because I might forget some.” She opened the small hand bag at her feet and took out her notebook and pen. But before she got a word down, her mother’s voice close by said, very softly, “better wait to write, dear. Look at the stairway, but don’t stare.”

Alice looked quickly and there, coming up the stairs, was a very regal looking lady, dressed in the clothes of a wealthy woman of India. Her robe was made of soft tones of tan and hung in long folds, wrapped around her very picturesquely. With her was a tall gentleman in similar long loose robes and two servants attended them. So much the girls saw at a glance. When they looked again they saw the most startling thing they had yet seen—in the side of the lady’s nose was a beautiful diamond that sparkled in the sunshine. Just as they were thinking how very queer the world is and what strange people are in it, the lady turned and spoke in beautiful English, as perfect as one could hope to hear and took the seat that her servant placed for her near by. In manner, she was natural and agreeable as she chatted and she seemed not at all as strange as her clothing and jewels.

For a few minutes the two girls said nothing, then Mary Jane remarked, “People wear funny things in funny places but I guess they’re nice after all.”

“Right you are,” agreed her father, much pleased to have her think so wisely about odd looking people, “and don’t think that just because dress or customs are different that people are so different at heart, for they are not.”

Mary Jane thought of that sentence many times in the next few weeks, for a strange language and different ways of living often made people appear queer at first sight. Yet, by looking closely, one could always discover that they were not so different after all.

She sat there on the channel boat for several minutes, looking hard and thinking; when suddenly Alice remarked, “Why, Mary Jane! England’s gone!”

Mary Jane looked and, true enough, the chalk cliffs of Dover had faded into the horizon and as far as she could see there was only water—clear, smooth water that sparkled in the hot, still sunshine.

“Are we way out in the ocean?” she asked, eagerly.

“Hardly,” replied her father. “Run over there and see,” he added pointing to the front end of the boat.

“But our chairs?” asked Alice.

“Chairs don’t matter now,” he told them and sure enough they didn’t for off to the south, as the girls saw when they ran to the front of the boat, was a long, low stretch of golden sand.

“Is it France?” asked Mary Jane.

“That’s France,” said her father, “and if you’ll look again, you’ll see that we are turning toward the landing this very minute.”

Mary Jane looked hard and as she looked, the boat swung around and she saw the wharf so near that she knew they would be landing in a few minutes. Then, quickly running back to her father, she picked up her little bag as she saw others doing and edged over to a place near the railing to watch the sights as the boat steamed up to the dock.