outside all was wind, rain, confusion and destruction. occasionally a bough came crashing down to earth and always the branches of the great tree beside maida’s window, rubbed against the house. the wind veered and whirled. one moment the rain was coming, like a shower of bullets, against the window of one side; the next it was lashing, like a bundle of twigs, against the glass of another.
inside was warmth, light, laughter and conversation. the older children sat about the big fireplace in the living room. rosie was on her knees there, busily wielding a corn popper. beside her sat laura toasting macaroons on the end of a long fork. silva and maida were bringing in great pans of molasses candy which simply refused to cool. the boys were fanning it in an effort to bring it to the tasting point. the little children were running about, looking at books, or playing games, according to their tastes, perfectly confident, as[pg 249] ever, that the relentless hour of eight o’clock could be put off this one evening. mrs. dore, quite herself again, was rocking delia who had given way to premature fatigue. in the midst of all this excitement granny flynn read tranquilly from her lives of the saints.
“i can’t believe the summer is over,” rosie exclaimed suddenly. “i won’t believe it! oh why can’t things like this go on for ever?”
“i couldn’t believe it either,” laura declared, “until this storm came. the weather has been so warm up to now that i wouldn’t believe autumn had come. but to-day and yesterday have been fallish.”
“autumn’s here,” silva said, “when the goldenrod and asters come.”
“i know it,” maida agreed mournfully. “how glad i am when flowers come and how sorry i am when they go! it makes you know that summer is flying just to watch them disappear. if the flowers only stayed after they came, you wouldn’t notice it so much. but they don’t. they go—first the dandelions and then the violets; and then the daisies and buttercups and wild roses and iris; then the elderberry and sumach; and then the goldenrod and asters. but as soon as each one of these stops blooming, you realize that that[pg 250] part of the summer is gone. and as soon as you see the red rose hips—” she twisted her hand through the long necklace of crimson berries that she was wearing, “—then you know that the fall has begun.”
“i never thought of that before,” laura exclaimed. “wouldn’t it be perfectly beautiful if they stayed until the end of the summer, even the dandelions? perhaps there wouldn’t be room for them all though.”
“this storm makes me think of fall all right,” arthur said.
“yes, and this fire,” dicky chimed in.
“it makes me think of school,” harold declared.
everybody groaned.
“perhaps it’s the popcorn,” rosie said, “and the apples. but somehow i feel to-night just as though it were halloween night. oh, do you remember the beautiful party we had at laura’s last halloween?”
“do i?” maida answered. “i should say i did. it was the first halloween party i ever went to. i shall remember it as long as i live. i remember sitting in the window of the little shop and watching all the pumpkin lanterns come bobbing along primrose court. oh how lovely it was!”
[pg 251]
“it doesn’t seem possible,” rosie reiterated dreamily, although she was vigorously shaking the popper, “that next sunday night means charlestown again, and monday morning, horrid school once more. how shall we ever get used to being kept indoors? i shall stifle. i shall miss everything—oh dreadfully. but the thing i shall miss most is my lovely little room, out-of-doors. oh no, it isn’t that,” she contradicted herself, “the thing i shall miss most is the cave. everything that happens to us is like a story book; but the cave is most like a story book of all. oh how sorry i was when we came to the end of it! i did so hope it would be a mammoth cave with a great big river in it and fish without eyes and chambers with stalactites and stalagmites.”
“if it had been,” tyma burle said shrewdly, “people would have been coming all the time to look at it and it wouldn’t be our cave any longer. i have enjoyed tennis most of anything,” tyma went on. “i think it is the greatest game in the world.”
“i don’t wonder you like tennis,” laura exclaimed, “when you can beat everybody at it. oh, how mad it still makes me to think that when i’ve been playing tennis for two[pg 252] years that tyma has to give himself a handicap when he plays with me.”
everybody laughed. they were always amused by the spectacle on the tennis court of laura’s rages when tyma beat her so easily.
“i have enjoyed the deer most,” arthur declared.
this specification of enjoyment had developed to a game now. arthur went on. “having those deer about is the most like robin hood of anything i’ve ever known. it’s like stories you read in kipling and stevenson. when i come across a group of them in the woods, i feel—well i give it up—i don’t know how i feel.”
“i know what dicky enjoys most,” maida said.
“what?” dicky demanded.
“the white peacocks.”
dicky admitted it. “but the swimming and the canoeing and the tennis, too,” he added as though a little jealous for these new sports of his. “but of course the white peacocks most— well, if arthur thinks the deer are like adventure stories i think the peacocks are like all the fairy stories in the world come true. what do you enjoy most, maida?”
[pg 253]
maida thought carefully. “everything! having all of you here.”
“oh but what special thing, maida?” rosie pleaded. “there’s always one thing you like better than others.”
“betsy’s badness, then,” maida admitted. “i’ve never laughed so much in all my life as at the things betsy does. you see when i was a little girl, i was so sick that i never did anything really naughty but betsy—oh she’s such fun!”
“i’ve enjoyed the keeping house part most,” laura stated with enthusiasm. “i never had the chance before to cook all the things i wanted in a real kitchen—and dust rooms—and arrange things—and put the flowers about. i just love setting the table for sunday night supper.”
“i hate it,” burst out rosie. “i hate every single thing you like, laura. but i’m glad you like it because then i don’t have to do it.” rosie poured the popper-full of white corn into a big brown bowl. “now don’t all grab at once!” she commanded, as a half-a-dozen eager hands reached towards the table. “wait until i pour melted butter on it. that makes it perfectly scrumptious! there you are![pg 254] now each one of you take a plate, and spoon the corn out on it.”
the bowl passed rapidly from hand to hand. rosie embedded her sharp little teeth into the shining coral of a baldwin apple. “oh what a good apple!” she said.
“what did you enjoy most, silva?” maida asked curiously, her mouth full of popcorn.
“oh, living in a house!” silva answered instantly. “you don’t know what fun that is to me. all my life i have lived either in a tent or a wagon. all my life i have longed to live in a house with lace curtains in the windows. how i love that little room of mine i can’t tell you! and yet at first—do you know—i was afraid i couldn’t stand it? it seemed as though the walls were pressing in on me and i couldn’t get enough air. many and many a night, i got up and went downstairs in the middle of the night and slept in the hammock. sometimes i felt like a bird in a cage—as if i was beating my wings the way i’ve seen birds do.”
“i’ve never got quite used to it,” tyma confessed. “sometimes, even now i have to get up in the middle of the night and go out and sleep on the grass.”
“my!” rosie exclaimed. “i should think[pg 255] that would be a hard bed. what have you enjoyed most, harold?”
“oh going all over the country on my bicycle,” harold explained. “you see always before we have gone to marblehead neck and you always have to go so far before you come to any new country. but here you start out in any direction and you are somewhere else before you know it.”
the little children who, as the popcorn approached the eating point, had been lured out of the room, now came in to say good night. as usual they were rebellious about going to bed; but were comforted by the promise of a long train-ride next sunday. as arthur tactfully concealed the popcorn under his chair and tyma mimicking him, shoved the apples under the couch, the good nights were effected without tragedy.
“how well they all look!” maida said proudly. “they are as freckled and sun-burned as they can be and fat as little butterballs!”
