“what are you going to do in the winter, maida?” rosie asked.

“i don’t know,” maida answered. “father hasn’t made up his mind yet and it all depends of course upon what he is going to do.”

“then if he went to europe, you’d go too?”

“yes,” maida admitted. “but i don’t think we’ll go to europe. at least,” she added conscientiously, “he hasn’t said we would. i don’t know what we’ll do.”

“but if you don’t go to europe, will you go to school?” silva asked.

“i don’t know,” maida responded. “perhaps i’ll have a governess.”

“what would you rather do, maida?” persisted rosie.

“i think i’d rather go to school,” maida answered honestly.

“and what kind of a school?” rosie kept it up.

“oh the school you all go to—in charlestown. i’d love that.”

[pg 257]

“oh how i wish your father would let you,” rosie declared fervently. “wouldn’t it be fun? but then you know all they could teach you there. you know geography and history and literature.”

“oh but my arithmetic is dreadful,” maida declared, “and my spelling, and father says he is perfectly ashamed of my writing.”

“but you speak french,” laura said enviously, “and italian!”

“a very little italian,” maida confessed.

“but you can read fairy tales in french,” dicky said. “oh what a lucky girl!”

“yes, i do think i’m lucky in that,” maida agreed with him.

“and if you aren’t very good in arithmetic, you know all about english and french and italian money,” harold asserted. “i think that’s great!”

“it’s very easy to learn that,” maida said deprecatingly. “how i wish i knew fractions and percentage and square root—like you, rosie.”

“rosie was the smartest girl in the room in arithmetic,” dicky declared. “she could beat any one of us, and as for mental arithmetic—whew! and she always won in the spelling matches.”

[pg 258]

“i never was in a spelling match in my life,” maida said in a grieved tone. “how i should enjoy it—except of course that i’d fail in the first word they gave me.”

“yes,” dicky informed her, “they always give you something like receive and believe or mississippi or separate! i shall never learn how to spell separate as long as i live.”

“i’ll tell you how to remember it,” harold offered. “you know there’s a city in south america called para. well, i always remember that there’s a para right in the middle of separate.”

“gee that makes it easy!” dicky’s voice was grateful. “i won’t forget that.” after an instant he added, “i hate school!”

“so do i,” said rosie.

“so do i,” said laura.

“so do i,” said arthur.

“so do i,” said harold.

“i never went to school,” maida said sadly.

“nor i,” admitted silva.

“nor i,” admitted tyma.

“you’d want to go to school if you’d never had the chance,” maida announced to the quartette of discontented ones. “isn’t that true?” she appealed to silva and tyma.

they both nodded.

[pg 259]

“everybody wants what he doesn’t have,” rosie said eagerly. “now i should like to travel like maida.”

“who wouldn’t!” exclaimed laura and arthur together.

“and i’d like to have a tutor,” dicky declared. “somebody to read to you and answer all your questions. i should think that would be great.”

“i don’t believe you would like school long, maida,” rosie went on. “at least if you went to the same kind of school we go to. isn’t that so, arthur?”

arthur nodded. “they’re no fun.”

“when the teacher puts the arithmetic problems on the blackboard,” rosie said, “i always get them done in five minutes. i’m good in arithmetic and they’re almost always correct. then there’s nothing for me to do until the rest of the children have finished but read in my reader that i’ve read through a million times; or my geography that i have read just as often; or in the supplementary reading that i know just as well.”

“that’s stupid,” maida decided reflectively.

“and then, when we have to write compositions, i nearly die,” rosie went on in the same discontented vein. “i hate [pg 260]compositions. i never can think of anything to say. i always have to stay after school—”

“why rosie, you write the most wonderful letters,” maida protested. “oh how i enjoyed getting them abroad! you told me all the things i wanted to know and how i used to laugh at them too.”

“oh well, letters aren’t writing!” rosie said scornfully. “anybody can write letters.”

“i can’t,” arthur declared, “i hate writing letters.”

“i don’t think it’s easy to write letters,” laura interrupted, “although maida and rosie do it so easily. i think they’re just as hard as a composition. if you can write a letter, you ought to be able to write a composition, and if you can write a composition, you ought to be able to write a letter.”

“and then,” arthur went on with the argument, “geography is so dull in school. you never learn about the places you’d like to know about—like gibraltar and the desert of sahara and the north pole and the jungles of africa and the great wall of china, and the mammoth cave and the grand cañon. or history. now i’d like to study about richard cœur de lion and robert bruce and william tell and thermopylæ and the alamo and the[pg 261] battle of hastings and waterloo and gettysburg. but you never get anything about them.”

“gracious!” rosie commented, “i don’t even know what those are.”

“sometimes i like school,” dicky said hesitatingly.

“that’s because you have only gone to school one year,” laura declared scornfully.

“well i’d rather be with you in a school that wasn’t very interesting,” maida persisted, “than not be with you at all. now next summer in the little house—”

“next summer!” rosie interrupted. “oh maida, is there going to be a next summer?”

“is there going to be a next summer?” maida repeated. she stared about the circle of faces; all very intent; all waiting almost with hushed breath, for her reply. “of course there’s going to be a next summer. what made you think there wasn’t?”

“you never said once there was going to be a next summer,” dicky accused her out of the hubbub which succeeded this statement. “oh i could jump up and down!”

“i shall jump up and down,” rosie announced—and did until the glass pendants to the candelabra tinkled.

[pg 262]

maida could only repeat feebly, “but of course there’s going to be a next summer. it never occurred to me to tell you so. i thought you understood.”

“not only a next summer, but next summers,” a voice said back of them.

they all started and then jumped to their feet. mr. westabrook, coming in very quietly, had apparently caught much of their discussion.

“a whole line of summers, all in a row,” he added as he took the easy chair which arthur pushed into the middle of the circle for him. he helped himself to popcorn from the plate which rosie filled and placed in his lap; took one of the apples which laura offered him; a piece of the molasses candy which tyma pressed upon him. “you’ve got a permanent engagement with us every summer.”

again rosie did what dicky had threatened to do—she jumped up and down. laura danced the whole length of the room, turning out one after another a series of the most beautiful pirouettes. silva did not move except to lean forward and stare intently at mr. westabrook. the boys drew their chairs in a circle closer about him.

“so you don’t think schools are very [pg 263]interesting?” buffalo westabrook went on, bending his eagle glance on arthur.

“not any i have ever been to,” arthur answered promptly.

“do you think they could be made interesting?” mr. westabrook went on.

“i’m not sure they could,” arthur answered.

but rosie broke in with an impulsive, “of course they could.”

“how?” mr. westabrook asked with his disturbing brevity.

“by letting you study the things you want, in the way you want to study them,” rosie answered immediately.

“i guess that’s as good an answer as i could get,” mr. westabrook admitted. “what would you say,” he went on very slowly after a pause, “if we tried to have such a school as that here?” he continued apparently unconscious of the excitement which was developing in his hearers. “a school where, as rosie says, you could study the things you want to study, in the way you want to study them. a school with plenty of books to read and dictionaries and encyclopedias and books of reference to consult. a book with all the newest maps and globes. a school with plenty of travel and discovery and exploration. a[pg 264] school with gardens to grow. a school with a magic lantern, an aquarium, and—”

maida could contain herself no longer. “father,” she burst out, “you’re going to have such a school for us!”

“i’ve got it,” buffalo announced. “and you’re all going to that school this winter.”

“oh my goodness,” rosie said in a quiet awed voice, “if anything else happens i shall die of happiness.”

“do our fathers and mothers know?” laura asked.

“know,” mr. westabrook repeated, though very tranquilly, “they helped to decide what you should study there.”

“and we won’t be separated after all,” dicky declared in a voice shaken with happiness.

“no.”

“what’s the name of the school?” harold asked.

“it hasn’t any name yet,” mr. westabrook answered.

“i know what to call it,” arthur said, his face lighting up. “we’ve had maida’s little shop and maida’s little house. why not call it maida’s little school?”