“do you want to see the place now or wait until after supper?” maida asked after the last admiring exclamation had died, the last pair of cramped legs had stretched themselves out.
“i’m starved,” rosie answered instantly, “but i must see everything first.”
the others echoed rosie’s decision with a fury of enthusiasm.
“we can’t see anything of the back of the house from here,” arthur said as though that clinched the matter.
and so while granny flynn and mrs. dore—the little children tagging them in a daze of fatigue, shot with excitement—were being taken care of by floribel and zeke, maida led the older children on a voyage of exploration.
“now first,” she said in a practical voice, “let’s go off a little distance—so that i can show you the whole lay of the land.”
the six of them returned almost to the spot[pg 45] where they had first caught sight of the little house.
“i’m going to start by telling you a little of the history of the house,” maida began importantly. “this is the old westabrook farmhouse and my father was born here; and his father and his father. it was built in 1645 and westabrooks have lived in it from that day to this.”
“oh maida!” rosie said in an awed tone, “isn’t that wonderful! is it just the same as it was then?”
“no, indeed,” maida answered. “almost every generation of westabrooks added something to the original house. the barn was built later and also all those little additions—we call them the annex—which connect the house with the barn, but it was my father who made the sides of them all windows.”
“who put the little house in the tree?” dicky asked.
“my grandfather.”
“wasn’t it wonderful that they left the tree!” laura commented.
“yes. you see my grandmother loved that big old tree dearly and so they saved it for her. now where shall we go first?”
“up the tree!” everybody answered.
[pg 46]
“all right. i might have known you would have said that,” maida declared, “when i’m just dying to show you the house.”
the tree grew out of the middle of the annex. the floor had been fitted neatly about the tree-trunk. stairs led up to the roof; and from the roof, a short flight of steps led to the tree house. one after another the children mounted them. it took them into a little square room with windows looking in all four directions.
“oh i can see spy pond—i mean the magic mirror!” rosie exclaimed.
“and from here you can see the big house,” laura exclaimed. “not very much—just a sort of shining....”
“oh—but—look—see!” dicky stuttered in his excitement. “from here you can see the ocean!”
the children deserted the other windows and rushed to dicky’s side. in the west appeared all a-sparkle what looked like a great heaving mass of melted glass. on and on it stretched, and on, until it cut through the vapory sky and disappeared forever. a few sail boats like great gulls were beating their wings on its glittering surface.
“isn’t it wonderful?” rosie said in a[pg 47] solemn voice. “it makes me feel almost like not speaking.”
“wait until you see it in a nor’easter,” maida promised, “or a great thunder storm.”
“just think,” arthur said, “all my life i’ve wanted to learn to sail a boat—”
“you will sometime,” maida interrupted, “but father says we’ve all got to learn to swim before we can get into a sailboat.”
“i know how to swim,” arthur stated in an off-hand voice. “all boys do.”
“i don’t,” dicky remonstrated.
“well you will in a week,” maida promised.
harold had all this time been keenly examining the ocean, the curving line of shore.
“what’s that island off there, maida?” he asked.
“everybody else calls it spectacles island, because it’s shaped like a pair of spectacles. but i call it tom tiddler’s ground, because nobody lives there. i don’t see why i shouldn’t call it what i want. it’s my island.”
“your island,” rosie repeated. “oh maida, you lucky girl.”
maida flushed and looked ashamed. “i mean our island,” she corrected herself.
“well,” rosie said in a meditative tone, “with a farmhouse in the country, the ocean with an island in it in front of it; a forest with deer in back of it; and a pond—maida can you think of anything else that we could possibly have?”
“well there might be a volcano on the island,” maida suggested, “a grotto somewhere like the blue grotto of capri; and then of course we have no glaciers, geysers, hot springs, deserts or bogs—”
“oh you goose!” rosie interrupted. “you know we couldn’t have any of those things.”
“we might have a cave,” arthur said. “are there any caves around here, maida?”
“not that i know of,” maida answered. “now let me show you the rest of the place. you’ve been so busy looking at the ocean that you haven’t noticed there’s a tennis court and a croquet-ground just below.”
the five excited faces peered out of the open window down through the tree branches and there was, indeed, a great cleared velvety lawn with wickets and stakes at one end and a tennis court marked in white kalsomine at the other.
“now,” maida said, “come into the house. oh i forgot to tell you that i call this tree[pg 49] father time because it’s the oldest one on the place. it’s too bad that i named all these things years ago because you could have had the fun of naming them too.”
“but i like all your names, maida,” dicky declared.
climbing down the narrow stairs, maida conducted them through the two rooms of the annex which lay between the tree room and the little house. the tiny procession marched first into the kitchen which was the second of these rooms—a big sunny room, the walls painted a deep blue and hanging against them great pans and platters of brass and copper. from the kitchen, they entered the dining room; a big room also which ran the entire width of the house all doors and windows on the western side. a long, wide table in the center; chairs along the walls; and a pair of mahogany sideboards facing each other from the ends—these were its furnishings.
they passed through a door on the eastern wall.
“now,” maida said, “we are in the original house. this used to be the old kitchen. now it’s the living room. look at the great fireplace with the oven at one side. this big[pg 50] wooden shovel was used to put the pans of bread in and to take them out. see how sweet all the old paneling is! that’s been here from the beginning and the old h hinges and the old butterfly hinges! and these darling little closets! and those big old beams with the spatter work on them. father had this great fender built around the fireplace so that the little children couldn’t fall into it when there’s a fire.”
“are we going to have fires in that enormous place?” rosie asked.
“i wish the temperature would fall to below zero,” laura declared recklessly.
“i should think it would take four-foot logs,” arthur had been examining the fireplace. crouching down he had even walked into it; stared up into the chimney.
“it does,” maida informed him proudly. “oh, there, rosie,” she pointed to a little triangular brass object on the hearth, “is a trivet!”
rosie pounced on it. “it looks like a brass cricket! what’s it for?”
“to put the tea pot on, close to the fire so it will keep hot.”
out of the living room through the northern[pg 51] door they came into one of the two smaller front rooms. the walls were lined with books. and here was a big table with a reading lamp, a desk, a few comfortable chairs.
“this is the library,” maida announced proudly.
“i’d like to shut myself up here for a month,” dicky, who was a great reader, said wistfully. “it looks as if all the books were interesting.”
“oh they are!” maida assured him. “the lang fairy books and grimm and andersen, george mcdonald and louisa m. alcott and howard pyle and stevenson and kipling, and all the nicest books that father and billy potter and dr. pierce and i could think of. and lots more that they selected that i had never heard of.”
from the library, they went out doors through the little vine-covered vestibule.
from upstairs came the voice of granny flynn and mrs. dore putting the younger children to bed.
“we three girls,” maida explained, “have rooms at the front of the house on the second floor. the nursery is back over the dining room.”
“where do we sleep?” harold asked.
“you boys,” maida replied, “are going to sleep in the barn.”
“gee whillikins!” dicky exclaimed. “what fun that’ll be!”
“i’d rather sleep in a barn than any place i know,” arthur said.
“it’s pretty good fun sleeping in a tent,” harold threw in.
“i was going to say,” arthur went on, “except out of doors in the woods.”
“now which shall i show you first,” maida asked, “the boys’ rooms or the girls’ rooms?” she did not wait for an answer. “come on girls,” she continued in a tone of resignation. “we’ve got to show the boys their place first. they won’t look at anything until they’ve seen them!”
the procession moved toward the barn.
the lower floor—roomy, raftered, sweet-smelling—was empty except for the canoes; a small run-about; the bicycles; a phonograph; a big chest; garden tools. maida led the way to the second floor. the railed stairway ran close to the side of the barn, brought them through a square opening in the ceiling, into another big room—the second story. here, in each of three corners, were army cots;[pg 53] beside each cot, a tall chiffonier. on top of each chiffonier were toilet articles in a simple style; beside each chiffonier a chair.
“that’s your bathroom over there.” maida pointed to the fourth corner which was partitioned off. “it has a shower. i don’t expect you’ll use it much because we’ll be bathing every day in the magic mirror. you hang your clothes on hooks behind these curtains. you see you each have a closet of your own.”
the boys were of course opening chiffonier drawers; pulling aside curtain-draped closets; examining the shower. their curiosity appeased, they made for down-stairs—and the canoes.
“now while you boys are examining the barn, would you girls like to explore upstairs in the house?” maida asked.
“i’m just dying to see my own room,” laura declared firmly.
the two girls pelted across the lawn in the wake of maida’s eager footsteps. they ran up the tiny steep flight of stairs, exactly opposite the little vestibule entrance. it brought them into a small hall from which opened four small slant-roofed chambers.
“this is my room,” maida said, pointing[pg 54] to one of the south chambers—the back room on the right of the stairs. “i have always slept there when we have been in the house. i love it because of the great tree outside my window. i have always called this tree, mother nature, to go with father time. so you see i have a father tree and a mother tree! when there’s a storm the boughs make such a sweet sound rubbing against my walls. and often little twigs tap on my window, and sometimes it sounds exactly as though the leaves were whispering to me.”
“oh maida!” rosie exclaimed, “i never saw anything so lovely in all my life. how i love that bed and that sweet little cricket.”
the room was simple—it held but a big, double, old-fashioned canopied bed; an old-fashioned maple bureau; and an old-fashioned maple desk; a little straight slat-backed chair in front of the desk and a little slat-backed rocker by one of the windows—but it was quaint. in front of the rocker was a cricket as though just ready for little feet.
the flowered wall-paper matched the chintz curtains and the chintz ruffles on the little cricket. under the window, in a little old-fashioned child’s chair, sat a great rag doll, and beside her was a little hair-cloth trunk.
[pg 55]
“yes, it is perfectly lovely,” laura agreed, “but oh maida, do show me my room.”
“what a selfish goop i am!” maida exclaimed in contrition. “your room, rosie, is in front of mine, and laura’s across the hall.”
the three little girls tumbled pell-mell into the front room. it did not differ much from maida’s or from laura’s across the way—except where the key-note of maida’s wall-paper and chintzes were yellow, that of rosie’s was crimson and laura’s blue. in each there was a double canopied bed; a little old-fashioned bureau; a little old-fashioned cricket; two quaint little old-fashioned chairs. but all these things differed in detail and although the rooms showed a similarity, they also showed an individuality. rosie and laura went wild with excitement.
“oh look at my sweet, sweet closet!” laura called from her room. “what a queer shape with the roof slanting like that. and a baby window in it!”
“and the windows,” rosie took it up from her room, “four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty-four panes! and such queer glass; all full of bubbles and crinkles and wiggle-waggles!”
and the beaming maida, running [pg 56]frantically from the one room to the other and from the other to the one, was saying, “yes, aren’t they lovely little closets—running under the eaves like that? i am so glad you like them. i was afraid you would think they were queer. yes, that’s old old glass. all the window glass in the house is old and some of it is such a lovely color.”
after a while, the frantic shutting and opening of desk drawers, bureau drawers, and closet drawers, ceased. the oh’s and ah’s died down from lack of breath. maida led the way into the south room at the left. “this is the guest chamber. and now,” she added, heading the file through a door at the back of the small hall which led into a big long room, “we’re out of the main house and in the annex. this is the nursery. it is over the dining room.”
the nursery was a big room with a little bed in each corner; miniature tables and chiffoniers all painted white.
“molly, timmie, dorothy, mabel,” maida pointed to the four beds. “delia will sleep in that room at the left with her mother and betsy in this room at the right with granny flynn. you see both these rooms open into the nursery and granny flynn and mrs.[pg 57] dore can keep an eye on what’s going on here.”
“they’ll have to keep two eyes on it—if betsy’s here,” rosie prophesied.
“now, except for the laundry and some empty rooms in the annex, i think you’ve seen everything. everything, that is, except floribel’s and zeke’s room. i don’t suppose you want to see them. and besides i’d have to ask their permission.”
“if i see another thing this day,” rosie declared desperately, “i shall die of happiness this minute.”
fortunately however, she was not called upon to gaze on any object which would have resulted in so speedy a demise. for just at that moment the cow-bell rang.
“that’s supper,” maida explained.
reinforcing the cow-bell’s call, came mrs. dore’s voice: “you must come down now, children. your supper is on the table, all nice and hot.”
