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MAIDA’S LITTLE HOUSE

[Illustration]




Maida’s Little House

BY
INEZ HAYNES IRWIN

Author of
MAIDA’S LITTLE SHOP, MAIDA’S LITTLE SCHOOL,
ETC.

[Illustration: Decoration]


GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers    :    :    New York




COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.

_First printing, November, 1921_
_Second printing, October, 1922_
_Third printing, August, 1928_
_Fourth printing, July, 1931_


PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.




TO
BARBARA IVERSON HAYNES




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                          PAGE
    I. THE HOME COMING              7

   II. THE PLAN                    20

  III. THE JOURNEY                 31

   IV. THE LITTLE HOUSE            44

    V. MORNING                     58

   VI. AFTERNOON                   72

  VII. TWILIGHT                    79

 VIII. NIGHT                       91

   IX. PLANS                       95

    X. RESPONSIBILITY             103

  XI. VISITORS                    109

  XII. BETSY’S FIND               125

 XIII. DISCOVERY                  140

  XIV. THE TERROR                 150

   XV. ARTHUR’S ADVENTURE         156

  XVI. MYSTERY                    164

 XVII. CRESCENT MOON BEACH        171

XVIII. EXPIATION                  186

  XIX. MAIDA’S MOOD               192

   XX. MAIDA’S FIND               198

  XXI. TRAGEDY                    210

 XXII. SILVA’S MESSAGE            219

XXIII. SILVA’S STORY              228

 XXIV. GUESTS                     244

  XXV. THE END OF SUMMER          248

 XXVI. PROMISE                    256




MAIDA’S LITTLE HOUSE




CHAPTER I

THE HOME COMING


“I wonder when Maida’s coming back?” said Rosie Brine as she approached
the trio of children who sat on the Lathrop lawn.

The three were Laura Lathrop; her brother, Harold Lathrop; their
friend, Arthur Duncan. Rosie did not join them on the grass. She seated
herself in the hammock behind them and began to swing, first slowly,
then so violently that her black curls swept back and forth with her
swift progress and her speech came in jerks. “I wouldn’t mind--how long
I had to wait--if I only knew--when she was coming.”

Nobody answered. Rosie had only asked a question that they all asked at
intervals, hoping against hope that somebody would make a comforting
guess.

“I don’t believe she’s _ever_ coming back,” Rosie answered herself,
recklessly swinging almost over their heads.

Arthur Duncan, a big broad-shouldered boy with tousled thick brown hair
beating down over his forehead and almost veiling eyes as steady as
they were black, answered this. “Oh Maida’s coming home some time. She
promised and she always keeps her promises.”

“When we were going to school,” put in Laura Lathrop, “it was bad
enough. But we didn’t have time to miss her so much then. But now that
school’s over and there’s nothing to do--Oh, how I wish she were here!”

“Well, what good would it do?” Harold Lathrop asked. Harold and Laura
looked much alike although Laura was slim and brown-haired and Harold
flaxen and a little stout. But both had blue eyes and small, regular
features.

“We wouldn’t see anything of her,” Harold continued, “she’d he going
away somewhere for the summer and we wouldn’t have a chance to get to
know her until fall.”

“Maida’d never do that,” Rosie Brine declared emphatically. “She’d
manage some way to be with us for a while.” She brought the hammock to
a stop for a moment with the swift kick of a determined foot against a
tuft of grass. “There’s one thing I am sure of and that is that Maida
would never forget us or want to be away from us. She says that in
every letter I’ve got from her.”

“Well, what are we going to do to-day?” Harold demanded. “I should
think from the way we sit here that we had not been counting up the
days to vacation for a month. Why Laura’s even had the hours all
numbered out on her calendar, so’s she could draw a line through them
every night.”

“I wanted to have the minutes marked out too,” Laura admitted, “but it
took too much time.”

“What are we going to do?” Harold persisted. “Here it is the first day
of vacation, and we sit here saying nothing. You think of something,
Arthur, you always can.”

Arthur Duncan rolled over face downwards on the grass. “I can’t think
of anything to do this morning,” he admitted. “It’s so hot ... and I
feel so lazy ... seems to me I’d just like to lie here all day.”

It was hot that late June day in Charlestown. Not a breeze stirred the
shrubs of the Lathrop lawn. The June roses drooped; the leaves seemed
wilting; even the blue sky looked thick and sultry. Huge white clouds
moved across it so lazily that it was as though they too felt the
general languor. The children looked as children generally look at the
close of school, pale and a little tired. Their movements were listless.

Just outside the gate of the Lathrop place was Primrose Court; a little
court, lined with maples and horse-chestnuts with shady little wooden
houses set behind tiny gardens, in their turn set within white wooden
fences. At one corner of Primrose Court and Warrington Street, set
directly opposite a school house, was a little shop. And over the shop
printed in gold letters against a background of sky blue, hung a sign
which read:


     MAIDA’S LITTLE SHOP


In Primrose Court, the smaller children were playing as briskly as
though there were no such thing as weather. Brown-eyed, brown-haired,
motherly Molly Doyle, quick, efficient but quiet, was apparently
acting as the wife and mother of an imaginary house. Smaller and
younger, Timmie Doyle, her brother, a little pop-eyed, brownie-like
boy, slow-moving and awkward, was husband and father. There were four
children in this make-believe household. Quite frequently, little Betsy
Hale, slim, black-eyed and rosy-cheeked and little Delia Dore, chubby
and blonde with thick red curls, attempted to run away; were caught and
punished with great thoroughness. Apparently Dorothy and Mabel Clark,
twin sisters, one the exact duplicate of the other, with big, round
blue eyes and long round golden curls, were the grown-up daughters
of this make-believe family. They were intent on household tasks,
thrusting into an imaginary stove absolutely real mud pies and sweeping
an imaginary room with an absolutely real dust-pan and brush.

Aside from this active scene, everything was quiet. Farther down the
Court, doves had settled; were pink-toeing about feeding busily;
preening and cooing.

“Sometimes,” Laura said thoughtfully, “I feel as though I had dreamed
Maida. If the Little Shop were not here with her name over the door and
all of you to talk about her with me, I should believe I had just waked
up.” She stopped a moment. “If it had been a dream how mad I should be
to think I _had_ waked up.”

“Do you remember how exciting it was when Maida first came to live over
the Little Shop?” Rosie exclaimed.

“I should say I did!” It was Laura who answered her. “Wasn’t it
wonderful when all that pretty furniture came for their rooms?”

“Yes, and the canaries and the great geraniums for the windows,” Rosie
added eagerly.

“The most wonderful thing though,” Arthur went on, “was when the sign
went up. It was such a pretty sign--MAIDA’S LITTLE SHOP in gold painted
on blue. And--”

“Gee, how wild we all were to see Maida!” Harold said.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Rosie’s voice was dreamy, “but I
certainly was surprised when Maida appeared--”

“Lame,” Arthur concluded for her, “like Dicky. But they’re both all
right now. Dicky certainly is and Maida was when she left for Europe.”

“I often think,” Harold began again after a little pause, “of when we
first met her and she used to talk of the things her father gave her,
we thought she was telling lies.”

“I never thought she was telling lies,” Rosie expostulated. “I loved
her too much for that. I knew Maida wouldn’t tell lies. I thought she’d
just dreamed those things. I remember them all--her mother’s mirror and
brush and comb of gold with her initials in diamonds.... And the long
string of pearls that she used to wear that came to her knees.... And a
dress of cloth of gold trimmed with roses and a diamond, like a drop of
dew, in the heart of every rose.”

“Yes, and the peacocks at her father’s place, some of them white,”
Arthur interrupted.

“And don’t you remember,” Harold went on, “we all thought she was crazy
when she said that once he gave her for a birthday present her weight
in twenty-dollar gold-pieces.”

“And a wonderful birthday party,” Laura added eagerly, “with a Maypole
and a doll-baby house big enough to go into and live--”

“I don’t wonder we didn’t believe it all,” Rosie declared with
conviction, “It sounds like a fairy tale. And then it turned out that
she was the daughter of a great millionaire and _every word_ of it was
true. Do you remember how we asked Mr. Westabrook at Maida’s Christmas
tree if it was all true and he said that it was?”

“I’d like to see those white peacocks,” Dicky said dreamily.

“I’d like to see that doll-baby house,” Laura added wistfully.

“I’d like to see the gold comb and brush and mirror with the
diamonds,” Rosie declared, “and that dress with the roses and the
diamond dew-drops. I like to look at precious stones. I like things
that sparkle.”

At this thought, she herself sparkled until her eyes were like great
black diamonds in her vivid brilliant face.

“I’d like to see that pile of twenty-dollar gold-pieces,” Harold said.

“Oh I wish she’d come back,” Rosie sighed. The sparkle all went out of
her face and she stopped swinging.

A door leading into Primrose Court opened with a suddenness that made
them all jump. A boy with big eyes, very brown and lustrous, lighting
his peaked face and straight hair very brown and lustrous, framing it,
came bounding out. He ran in the direction of the group on the lawn,
and as he ran he waved something white in his hand. The doves flew away
before him in a glittering V. “Hurrah!” he yelled.

“Gee, how Dicky can run!” Arthur Duncan exclaimed. “Who’d ever believed
that one year ago, he was wearing an iron on his leg? He--”

“Oh what is it, Dicky?” Rosie Brine called impatiently.

Dicky had by this time reached the Lathrop gate.

“A post card from Maida,” he shouted.

“Does she say when she’s coming home?” Laura asked quickly.

“No,” Dicky answered. He threw himself down among them; handed the post
card to Rosie who had leaped from the hammock. It passed from hand to
hand. Harold, the last to receive it, read it aloud. “Love to everybody
and how I wish I could see you all!” was with the date, all it said.

“Nothing about coming home,” exclaimed Rosie, “Oh dear, how
disappointed I am.”

“Where’s it from?” Arthur asked, as though suddenly remembering
something. “The last post card was from Paris.”

“London,” Dicky answered.

“London,” Arthur echoed, “she told me that when she came home, she’d
sail from England.”

“Did she?” Rosie asked listlessly. “She never told me that, but you
see, she says nothing of sailing. She’s probably going to spend the
summer there. I remember that she told me of a beautiful place they
lived in one summer in England. She said that there was a forest
not far from the house where Robin Hood and his men used to meet.
Probably she will go there.” Rosie stopped for a minute and then the
listlessness in her voice changed to a kind of despair. “I don’t
believe she’ll ever come back.”

“I know she will,” Dicky announced with decision. “The last thing Maida
said was, ‘I’ll come back,’ and she always keeps her promises.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she came back this summer some time,”
Arthur said. “Anyway I know she said they’d sail from England.”

“Yes but by that time we’ll all be away.” Laura’s voice held a
disappointed note. “We’re going to Marblehead in a week or two for the
whole summer and you’re going to Weymouth, Rosie, aren’t you?”

Rosie nodded. “Only for two weeks though.”

“Where are you going?” Laura asked Arthur.

“I don’t know. When my father gets his two weeks’ vacation, maybe we’ll
take a tramp somewhere, that is if it doesn’t come after school has
begun.”

“And where are you going, Dicky?” Laura went on.

“Nowhere. We’re going to stay here in Charlestown. Primrose Court will
be my vacation. Mother says she will try to take us to City Point or
Revere or Nantasket every Sunday. Now what are we going to do to-day?”

“We might go upstairs in the cupola and play games,” Harold suggested.

“No I don’t want to stay in the house the first day of vacation,” Rosie
announced discontentedly.

“Let’s play stunts,” suggested Dicky who, since his lame leg had
recovered, could never seem to get enough of athletic exercise.

“Too hot,” decided Laura.

“Hide-and-go-seek,” suggested Arthur.

“Too hot,” decided Harold.

“Follow-My-Leader,” suggested Dicky.

“Too hot,” decided Rosie.

“Hoist-the-Sail,” suggested Arthur.

“Too hot,” decided Laura.

“Prisoners’ Base,” suggested Harold.

“Too hot,” decided Rosie.

“Tag,” suggested Arthur.

“Too hot,” decided Harold.

Laura burst out laughing. “Every game anybody proposes is too hot for
somebody else. I say let’s all lie face downwards and think and think
and _think_ until somebody gets an idea of something new that we can
do.”

Everybody adopted her suggestion. The four on the grass turned over,
lay like stone images carved there. Rosie turned over in the hammock.

“I wish Maida’d come home!” came from her in muffled accents before
she, too, subsided.

       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

A whole minute passed. Nobody moved. Even Rosie kept rigid.

Into the silence floated the note of a far-away automobile horn. It was
not so much a call or warning as a gay carolling, a long level ribbon
of sound which unwound itself continuously and, drifting on the soft
spring air, came nearer and nearer. It stopped for a moment ... started
again ... continued more and more gayly ... ran up and down a trilled
scale once more....

The stone images stirred uneasily.

The horn grew louder.... In a moment it would pass Primrose Court....
The horn ended in a high swift call.... The car stopped....

The stone images lifted their heads.

A girl, lithe but strong-looking with wide-apart big gray eyes gleaming
in a little face, just touched in the cheek with pink, with masses of
feathery golden hair hanging over her blue coat, was stepping out of
the car.

The images flashed upright; leaped to their feet.

“It’s Maida!” Rosie Brine called as she sped like an arrow shot from a
bow towards the automobile. “Oh, Maida! Maida! Maida! Maida!”

“It’s Maida!” the others took it up and raced into the Court.




CHAPTER II

THE PLAN


“When did you land?” “Why didn’t you let us know?” “How long are you
going to stay?” “Did your father come too?” “Where’s Billy Potter?”
“How’s Dr. Pierce?” And “Oh how you’ve grown!”

Maida tried to answer them all; to hug each of the girls who were
hugging her all together; to hold out a hand to each of the three boys
who seemed all to shake both her hands at once; to manage to kiss Betsy
Hale, who hearing the name Maida shouted, vaguely recalled that there
had once been a Maida whom she loved; and who thereupon, hung tight to
one of her legs; to manage to kiss Delia Dore who had no remembrance
of Maida whatever but in imitation of Betsy, hung tight to the other
leg; and in addition to call to Molly and Timmie and Dorothy and Mabel
who remembered her perfectly and who danced like little wild Indians on
the outskirts of the crowd, yelling, “Maida’s come back! Maida’s come
back!” at the top of their lungs.

All this took much less time to happen than it has taken to describe,
and it was suddenly interrupted by the rapid opening of the door to the
Dore yard. A little old Irish woman with silvery hair and with a face
as wrinkled as a nut, came rushing out, her arms extended calling, “My
lamb’s come back! My lamb’s come back!”

Maida ran to her and hugged her ecstatically. “Oh, dear Granny Flynn!”
she said, “Dear, dear Granny Flynn!”

Then there appeared back of Granny Flynn, Mrs. Dore--Granny Flynn’s
daughter; Delia and Dicky Dore’s mother--who had to be met in the same
affectionate way. Mrs. Dore was a tall, brown, fresh-complexioned
woman. It was from her that Dicky inherited his brown coloring and
Delia her sparkling expression.

“I’d never know you for the same child,” Mrs. Dore said.

Of course the grown people claimed Maida’s attention first. They
showered her with questions and she answered them every one with all
her old-time courtesy and consideration. Was she well? Well! But look
at her! When did she land? She had landed the day before in New York;
had come on the midnight to Boston. Where was she living? At their
home on Beacon Street. Would she stay to lunch? Yes! Yes! _Yes!_ Her
father had said that if she were invited, she could spend the whole
rest of the day in Primrose Court; he would send the car for her late
in the afternoon. Where was she going after that? Her father would tell
them all this afternoon. He had some plans, but they weren’t worked
out yet. Would she be in Boston for a few days? Probably. Then, during
that time, wouldn’t she like to come back to her own rooms over MAIDA’S
LITTLE SHOP? _Would she?_ Oh goody, she could telephone her father to
bring her some clothes.... It went on and on until the older children
stood first on one foot and then on the other with impatience; and the
younger ones went back to their house-keeping game and their frequent
punishments.

But finally the curiosity of this group of grown-ups was satisfied and
the children claimed their prey. A clamorous group--every one of them
telling her some bit of news and all at once--they made the tour of the
Court. They called on Mrs. Lathrop, who mercifully forebore to ask more
than five minutes of questions; and on the Misses Allison, a pair of
middle-aged maiden ladies. Here the confusion doubled itself because
of the noisy screams of Tony the parrot.

Tony kept calling at the top of his croaking voice, “What’s this all
about?” Each of the children tried to tell him, but he was apparently
dissatisfied with their explanations; for he only called the louder and
with greater emphasis, “I _say_--_what_ is this all about?” Finally, in
despair he exclaimed, “Good-night, sweet dreams,” and subsided.

At length, the six of them--Maida, Rosie, Laura, Arthur, Dicky and
Harold--retired to the Lathrop lawn and plumped down on the grass. They
talked and talked and talked....

“How you have grown, Maida!” Rosie said first. “How tall you are and
strong-looking!” She would have added, “And how pretty!” if the boys
had not been there, but shyness kept her from making so personal a
comment in their presence.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking about you,” Maida laughed, “but
then you have all grown, Arthur particularly.” In her candid, friendly
way, she surveyed them, one after another. “You are taller too, Laura,
and I believe even your hair has grown.”

“It certainly has,” Laura admitted. Laura’s hair was extraordinarily
long and thick. It hung in two light-brown braids, very glossy, not a
hair out of place, to below Laura’s waist. At the tip of each braid was
a big pale blue bow.

“As for you, Rosie, you are still taller than I, I’m afraid.”

“Let’s measure,” Rosie answered springing to her feet.

The two girls stood shoulder to shoulder. Rosie, it proved, was a
little the taller. Maida continued to look at her after they had
resumed their places on the grass. “What a beauty she is,” she thought;
and she too was withheld by shyness and a sense of delicacy from making
this comment before the others.

Rosie was certainly handsome. Tall, active, proud-looking; great
black eyes lighted by stars; a mass of black hair breaking into high
waves and half curls; cheeks as smooth as satin and stained a deep
crimson--ivory-white, jet-black, coral-crimson--that was Rosie. Maida
had always called her Rose-Red.

“But the greatest change has come in Dicky and me,” Maida ended. “We
have both lost our lameness. You don’t limp, Dicky, and I don’t. Let’s
race to the gate and back.”

Dicky was on his feet in a minute. Arthur called, “One to make ready,
two for a show--” At the word, “_Go_” they were off. Dicky was more
active but Maida was taller. The race finished a tie.

The blood which Maida’s running brought to her cheeks painted roses
there; not the deep crimson roses which bloomed perpetually in Rosie’s
face but transient blossoms, delicately pink. And under that flush, her
face, a healthy ivory, looked well. Her big gray eyes were filled with
happiness and the torrent of her pale-gold feathery hair seemed to gush
from her head like living light.

They sat and talked until luncheon and immediately after luncheon
gathered on the lawn and talked again. Maida still had questions to ask
and comments to make.

“You have all grown,” she said once, “but somehow I think the little
children have grown the most and Dorothy and Mabel more than anybody!
Their eyes still look like great blue marbles and their hair as though
it had been curled over a candlestick. Isn’t it marvelous how they
keep exactly the same height. Twins are magical creatures, aren’t
they? As for Betsy and Delia--they’re great big girls. I suppose Betsy
still runs away every chance she gets. On the whole I think Molly and
Timmie have changed the least. Does Timmie still fall into all the
‘pud-muddles?’ Molly still looks like a darling brown robin and Timmie
like a brown bogle. Don’t you remember I used to call them Robin and
Bogle.”

The children answered all her questions. Yes, Betsy still ran away. No,
Bogle had quieted down. He didn’t fall into “pud-muddles” any more. Of
course they had their questions to ask Maida about her year in Europe.
And she told them of her experiences in Italy, Switzerland, France,
and England. But though she answered them instantly, and with the
fullness of detail which had always been her characteristic, it seemed
at moments as though her mind were not all on what she was saying. Once
or twice, she even interrupted herself to start something which had
nothing to do with her subject. But apparently, both times, she thought
better of it and checked a tongue which obviously was yearning to speed
on in the interest of that unknown subject.

“There’s something you want to tell us Maida,” Dicky guessed shrewdly
once. “But you won’t let yourself.”

Maida blushed furiously but her eyes danced. She did not answer. Rosie,
thereupon, continued to watch her closely. “Maida Westabrook, you’re
almost bursting over something,” she said once; then as though with an
inspiration, “You’ve got a plan of some kind and I know it.”

Again Maida blushed and this time she laughed outright. “Wait and see!”
was all she said, however.

After they had talked themselves out, they showed Maida the accumulated
treasures of the last year. The wood-carving, which was Arthur’s
accomplishment and the paper-work which was Dicky’s, had improved
enormously. The beautiful box of tools that Mr. Westabrook had
presented to the one and the big box of paints that he had given the
other, were of course important factors in the improvement. Laura still
danced beautifully and she danced her latest dance for Maida--a Spanish
fandango. Harold was raising rabbits and he showed his entire family
to Maida. At the urge of all this work, Rosie, who hated the sight of
a needle, had taken in despair, to knitting. She could endure knitting
she told Maida because the work grew so fast. She herself said though
that the less said about the results of her labor, the better. And
Maida frankly agreed with her when she examined some of it.

After this the group returned to the yard for more talk.

Somehow they didn’t feel like playing games. Late in the afternoon,
they sprinkled the flower beds and hosed the lawn for Mrs. Lathrop.
Then as this made further sitting on the grass impossible, they retired
to the tiny Dore yard with its amusing little flower bed and its one
patch of grass. There was just about room for their group there. They
sat down. Again they asked Maida about her travels. But now Maida was
distinctly absent-minded. Suddenly in the midst of a description of
Pompeii, there sounded a long, faint far-away call of an automobile
horn. It broke, like a fire-rocket, into a flurry of star notes; then
dropped a long liquid jet of sound which, again like a fire-rocket,
dropped another shower of notes. The effect on Maida was electric. She
came upright, quivering.

“That’s father,” she said. “_Now_ I can tell you what I’ve been biting
my lips all the morning to keep back. I didn’t want to tell you until
he was here to talk to your fathers and mothers. But, oh, we’ve got
such a beautiful plan for the summer-- Oh it’s so wonderful that it
seems like a fairy tale.”

The long jet of sound lengthened ... came nearer....

“Father wants you all to come to spend the summer with us at Satuit.
He’s going to do the most beautiful thing you ever heard of in your
life. Just as he gave me Maida’s Little Shop, he is going to give me
Maida’s Little House. _He_ is going to live in the Big House where
he can have all the grown-up company he wants and _we_ are going to
live in the Little House. The Little House is so far away from the Big
House that nobody would ever guess we were there. Oh, but it’s all so
beautiful and there are so many things to tell about it that I don’t
know where to begin. For one thing he’s going to let us all help in--
We girls are to do our part in the--And the boys are to take care of
the-- Oh it is such a duck of a house! Built very near a great big pond
and not so very far off--the ocean. And there’s a wood and House Rock
and the Bosky Dingle ... and.... Oh, I don’t know how to tell you about
it....”

She stopped for breath.

The horn came nearer and nearer.

The five faces stared at her. For one astounded instant nobody could
speak.

“Oh Maida!” at last Rosie breathed. The two girls threw themselves upon
her; Arthur rose and then suddenly sat down again but Dicky kept quite
still his eyes full of stars. “I knew you’d have some plan, Maida,” he
said. Harold, unexpectedly, turned a somersault.

“I know I’m dreaming,” Laura almost whispered.

The horn stopped. A great gray car turned into Primrose Court. A
man, middle-aged, tall, massive and with a pronounced stoop to his
shoulders, stepped out. He turned a head, big and shaggy as a buffalo,
in the direction of Maida’s Little Shop. The piercing eyes, fierce and
keen as an eagle’s, seemed to penetrate its very walls. This was Jerome
Westabrook whom the world called, “Buffalo” Westabrook.

Maida dashed out of the yard, the children trailing her.

“Oh father, father, I’ve told them, I’ve told them! I couldn’t keep it
any longer after I heard the horn.”




CHAPTER III

THE JOURNEY


As the train drew into the Satuit Station, it seemed to spill children
from every door. Counting them carefully, Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore
found to their great relief that the twelve, with whom they started,
were still all with them. But--big and little--they were all so full
of the excitement of the trip that it looked as though, at any moment,
they might vanish in the strange country which surrounded them. Arthur,
leading the two boys, started an investigation of the station. The
three big girls followed. Only the little children, tired by the
trip and awed to quiet by the unfamiliar surroundings, stayed close
to the women’s skirts. Timmie’s big full eyes surveyed in wonder the
strange new world. Delia, who had fallen comfortably asleep in her
mother’s arms, suddenly waked up, rubbing her eyes, and looked about
her. “Oh take me back to Shalstown!” she wailed in a sudden attack of
homesickness and fortunately fell asleep again.

“Oh here’s the car!” Maida called.

A big comfortable limousine came round the bend of the road. The driver
alighted, and came forward. “Here I am at last, Miss Maida,” he said,
his hand to his cap.

“Oh good afternoon, Botkins,” Maida greeted him. She introduced him to
Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore; then to the children.

“I’m sorry I was late, ma’am,” Botkins said to Granny Flynn, “but I
nearly ran over a dog in the road. I stopped to see if it was all
right.”

“And was it?” Rosie Brine, who had a passion for animals, asked eagerly.

“Right as a trivet,” Botkins answered.

“What is a trivet, Maida?” Rosie asked in a mystified aside.

“I’ll show in a few minutes, goose,” Maida rejoined. “It’s an English
word.”

Botkins, who was English also, began stowing the party away in the
automobile: Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore on the back seats; Betsy and
Delia between them; and Mollie and Timmie at their feet. Maida and
Laura each holding a very active Clark twin, occupied the little seats.
Rosie, to her great delight, was permitted to sit with the driver. The
three boys hung onto the running board.

“We look like an orphan-asylum,” Arthur commented as, with a long call
of warning from the horn, they started off.

The road stretched straight before them, wide and yellow, furred with
trees on both sides; then vanished under an arch of green as it turned
to the left.

“Aren’t there any houses in Satuit, Maida?” Laura asked.

“Plenty,” Maida answered. “We’ll come to some in a minute--then to
more. In a little while, we’ll go right through the town.”

For a few moments nobody spoke; just watched for the first house.
Presently a little white farmhouse, gambrel-roofed and old, popped into
view at one side.

“Oh did you see that lovely old well with the long pole?” Rosie
exclaimed from the front seat.

“That’s a well-sweep,” Maida explained. “It has a bucket at one end.”

“Oh see the ponies! One, two, three, four, five--” but the car shot
Laura past before she had all the ponies counted.

“Gee, look at all those hens!” came from Arthur. “Must be a hundred!”

And then followed a chorus of “Oh sees!” The beautiful big barn with
its wide doors! The lovely little pond covered with lily pads: The
trim little vine-covered summer house perched on the hill! Bee hives!
The old grave yard!

And, “See the moo-cow!” piped up Betsy Hale and “Tee the moo-tow!”
Delia, as usual mimicked her.

Timmie did not speak; but his big eyes, made bigger by wonder, mirrored
everything.

“There’s the town!” Maida said finally and again for a few moments
there was silence.

The town manifested itself at first only by scattered farmhouses.
But these began to draw closer and closer together until, finally,
they seemed almost to huddle about the beautiful little white church
standing amidst rows of old lichen-covered slate gravestones, and
pointing with a slender, delicately-cut-and-carved, white spire at the
blue sky. Stores were here too, a moving picture house; a small inn; a
post office; a garage.

Then the road turned suddenly and for an instant it was almost as
though their speed would take them across the broad stretch of a
velvety green lawn into the blue harbor which expanded beyond. This
harbor bore here and there white-sailed boats. Not far away, a boy was
fishing from the side of a dory. There was a chorus of delighted _ohs_
and _ahs_ from the car. But their speed did not abate for a moment.

On they went and on; and soon the village was behind, far behind;
houses were drawing apart from each other. The forest was closing about
the farms, separating them.... Now the car was on the smooth hard road
again, thick tree growths on both sides.

With a contented sigh, Betsy closed her eyes and fell fast asleep.
Delia had long ago surrendered to the sand-man. Molly was trying her
best to keep awake; but it was obvious that she could not hold out
long. Timmie’s eyes were beginning to film with fatigue, but he fought
it manfully. Even the Clark twins had become silent. But the other
children were as wide-awake as when they started.

More yellow road and more yellow road--more green trees and more green
trees. In the front seat, Rosie bounced. “Oh Maida,” she called, “it
seems to me I can’t wait. Will we ever get there?”

Maida’s eyes danced. “Oh in an hour or so,” she said airily.

“An hour,” Laura groaned. “We have gone a thousand miles already.”

Even as she spoke, the motor turned smoothly, the horn emitting a long
silvery gurgle. They entered, between two massive stone posts, a long
avenue which curved away in the distance like a wide gray tape thrown
amidst the trees.

“Maida Westabrook you fibber!” Rosie exclaimed, “we’re here now!”

Maida only twinkled.

On they went. On both sides grew great trees. But, unlike the forests
that stretched away from the public roads which they had just
traversed, these woods had been freed of their underbrush. The grass
beneath them was like velvet and lying on it, as though liquid gold had
oozed or poured through the branches, shone tiny splashes and great
pools of sunlight. It looked as though the whole green earth were
caught in a golden net.

On and on! To the impatient children it seemed that they went miles.

“Oh!” Arthur Duncan exclaimed suddenly. And then, quite like a girl,
again and again, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

The car had turned so that it looked straight down into a cleared
glade. At the end of the vista, a group of deer, dappled in white all
over their lovely, dead-leaf brown bodies, lifted their heads, and with
their great soft eyes surveyed the car. But they stared for such a
tiny fraction of a second that it scarcely seemed that the thing had
happened at all for--flash! There was a glimpse of white as they turned
tail. They vanished as instantly, as completely, as miraculously as
though they were ghosts.

“Oh _Maida_!” Rosie exclaimed. “Deer! How wonderful! Do they belong to
your father or are they wild?”

“Those that you saw are dappled deer. Father had them brought here from
England,” Maida answered. “But once in a while we do see wild deer in
this country.”

“Oh I’d like to see some _wild_ deer,” Arthur said.

Dicky didn’t speak but his eyes were luminous. As for Harold, he was
still gasping with the surprise of it.

On they went. The road curved and rippled like a ribbon being
constantly thrown ahead of them. Suddenly they came to a great cleared
space, smoother than any plush. Botkins stopped the car. At the end
towered a huge house of white marble, with terraces. On the lawn, which
stretched between the children and the house, grew, widely-separated, a
few stately trees; wine-glass elms, oaks; copper beeches and powdered
spruces. It was very still now and, unimpeded, the setting sun was
sending great golden shafts across that stretch of plushy grass. They
struck a pool of water in a marble basin in the middle of that emerald
velvet; and through the fountain which played about it. Here ... there
... yonder ... motionless in that liquid golden light ... were white
objects....

“What are those white things?” Dicky asked curiously.

And then, one of the white objects arose, opened like a fan, spread to
a wonderful size its snow-white tail; moved in stately fashion along
the velvety-green lawn.

“Maida!” Dicky gasped. “Not--Yes they are--white peacocks!”

“Yes,” Maida answered. “White peacocks. I am so glad they were there.
Everything has happened just as I wanted it. Sometimes it will be days
before you see deer, although there are so many here. And sometimes
the peacocks wander to the back of the house. I knew you wanted to see
them, Dicky, and I’ve been hoping all along that they would be here for
you. There are seven. We have a dozen.”

Dicky was listening with all his ears; but at the same time he was
looking with all his eyes. For out of the trees to the left, suddenly
appeared another pair of peacocks in full sail. Not white ones this
time; great prismatic, blue and green creatures--the sun struck bronze
lights out of them as they floated on.

“It’s like a fairy tale,” Dicky breathed.

“Are we going to live there?” Rosie asked in an awed tone.

“Oh mercy no!” Maida answered. “That’s father’s house--the Big House.
Our house is ever so much nicer.”

“I hope it isn’t any bigger,” Laura said, her voice a little awed too.

Maida laughed a little. “No it’s not quite as big as that,” she
admitted.

“Shall I go on, Miss Maida?” Botkins asked.

“Yes, please Botkins,” Maida answered. And they continued to go
on through more winding, geometrically perfect, beautifully-kept,
gray roads; past armies and armies of trees: high, plumy-tipped,
feathery-trunked aristocratic elms; vigorous, irregular-shaped,
peasant-like oaks; clumps, gracefully-slender, fluttering a veil of
green leaves, of white birch; occasional pine, resinous and shining;
beeches; firs. Suddenly everybody exclaimed at once, “Oh see the pond!”

“What pond is it?” Harold asked.

“It’s called by some people Spy Pond,” Maida answered, “but I call it
the Magic Mirror. It’s our pond and I think I ought to be allowed to
call it what I want.”

“I think so too,” agreed Laura.

“What do you mean by _our_ pond?” Arthur asked.

“Just what I say,” Maida replied promptly. “It’s our pond. It belongs
to my father and it’s a part of the grounds of Maida’s Little House.
We can go swimming in it every day. That is if we don’t prefer--” She
broke off in a little embarrassed laugh.

“Oh Maida you are so full of secrets I could _kill_ you,” Rosie
threatened.

Maida only laughed.

They passed the pond which stretched for a considerable distance, long
and crescent-shaped between its tree-hung banks, and now they were in
the real forest. The road was smooth as always and beautifully-kept,
but on both sides, the forest had been left to grow as it pleased. It
was filled with underbrush. The tree trunks were obscured by great
bushes. Here and there through openings, the children could see
gigantic rocks thrusting great heads and shoulders out of the masses of
rusty-colored leaves.

“Oh isn’t it lovely!” Rosie said in a perfect ecstasy. “Lovely, lovely,
lovely!” she went on repeating dreamily as though caught in a trance of
delight. She ended with a scream. “Did you see that? What was it Maida?”

“A woodchuck,” Maida answered smilingly.

Timmie awakened by Rosie’s scream, asked if there were any lions and
tigers about. Much disappointed at Maida’s _no_, he fell asleep again.

And now they seemed to be going up hill, slowly but steadily up. Up,
up, up. The car had begun to speed a little. Ahead was another rounding
curve. Botkins took it with a flash.

The car came out in front of--

It was one of the little colonial farmhouses a story-and-a-half in
height; weather-colored, slant-roofed; to which addition after addition
has been added by succeeding generations. It was set in an expanse
of lawn, cut cleanly in two by a path of irregularly-shaped, sunken
stones, dominated, one on either side, by twin elms of enormous girth
and amplitude. The house faced the east.

The additions, which now merged into one long structure, had gone off
to the right and the north where they joined a big barn. This barn
was the same velvety, gray weather-color as the house but with great
doors painted a strange deep old blue which had faded to an even
stranger, deeper blue. The sun struck into the open door and shot
over the shining sides of half-a-dozen brilliantly colored canoes
lying face-downwards on the floor; glittered in the bright-work of
half-a-dozen bicycles, drawn up in a line.

The front door of the house opened as the automobile came in sight and
a colored man and woman, young and smiling, came out to meet them. The
automobile seemed to explode children, who started over the lawn of the
house.

What a house it was!

The pointed-topped, pillared vestibule entrance was covered with
roses which smothered it in a pink bloom. Hollyhocks, not blooming
yet, marched in files along the front of the house. Lilacs, in heavy
blossom, bunched in hedges at the ends. At one side, a trumpet vine,
with a trunk as thick as iron cable, had crept to the very top spine
of the house, was crawling towards the single ample chimney which
protruded from the middle of the roof. At the other side, a graceful
elm thrust close to the shingles. A syringa bush and a smoke bush grew
in front. But charming as was the house, interesting as was the barn,
the children’s eyes did not linger long on either of them, because
inevitably their gaze fixed on that Annex which made an intermediate
house between them. For in the middle of it--yes _in_ it and _through_
it--grew an enormous gnarled oak. Its trunk emerged from the roof
and its long level branches spread over it in every direction. More
than that--above that roof--securely caught in those flatly-growing,
widely-spread branches was a little Tree House.

The colored pair were almost on them now.

“Good afternoon Floribel,” Maida greeted them, “Good afternoon Zeke.
Let me introduce you to Mrs. Flynn and Mrs. Dore.”

Then she turned to the rest of the group.

“Children,” she commanded in a tone of happy pride, “behold Maida’s
Little House.”




CHAPTER IV

THE LITTLE HOUSE


“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 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.

“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 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 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 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 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; 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 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.

“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 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. 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.”




CHAPTER V

MORNING


The sun poured through the windows onto Maida’s bed. She stirred.
Was it a bird calling her? No. It was the phonograph. She peeped out
the window. Arthur had brought the phonograph to the opening of the
barn door. It was playing, “Bugle Calls of the American Army.” It was
reveille that she was listening to.

The door to her bed-chamber flew open and Rosie, her heavy curls
flying, her black eyes sparkling, precipitated herself across the room.
“Oh Maida!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it wonderful? I am not _dreaming_ am
I? Ow!” as Maida pinched her. “I have been awake for I don’t know how
long, listening to the birds and everything. I have been waiting ever
so long for you to wake up. I thought you would never stir.”

“Well now that I’m awake, I’ll dress as soon as possible,” Maida
promised. “We’ve got a long day before us. Let’s go in and get Laura
up.”

Laura was still deep in slumber. Indeed she showed a marked
disinclination to awaken. Rosie charitably assisted her efforts by the
application to her face of a very wet--and a very cold--sponge. For
some reason, this action precipitated a pillow fight. In the midst
of it, the breakfast bell sounded but they paid no attention to it.
Finally Granny Flynn had to call: “Stop that running about, children,
and get dressed. Breakfast’ll be on the table in a minute.”

When the second bell rang, the boys came in from the barn and the
twelve children, Granny Flynn at one end of the table and Mrs. Dore at
the other, sat down to a breakfast of fruit, oatmeal, eggs, and all the
milk they wanted.

After breakfast, Maida said, “Now, first, I want to show the six little
children where’s the nicest place for them to play. Do the rest of you
want to come?”

The rest _did_ want to come. Perhaps Laura voiced their sentiments
when she said, “That’s a great idea, Maida. Get the little children
interested, so they won’t be forever tagging us.”

Maida led the way to the side of the house--the north. They crossed an
expanse of lawn, came to an opening in the stone wall. Beyond looked
like unbroken forest. But from the break in the wall, threading its way
through the trees, appeared a well-worn path. They followed it for a
few rods. It ended flush against a big sloping rock.

“This,” Maida said triumphantly, “is House Rock.”

The children swarmed over it.

“Isn’t it a beauty!” Rosie exclaimed.

It was a beauty--and especially for play purposes. It was big, cut up
by stratification into all levels--but low. At its highest end, it was
not three feet from the ground. Trees shaded it; bushes hedged it;
mosses padded it. No wonder it had been named House Rock; for it was a
perfect setting for those housekeeping games in which little children
so delight.

“Now, listen to me, little six,” Maida began.

But Arthur interrupted, “Why that’s a great name for them--the Little
Six. And we,” he added triumphantly, “are the Big Six.”

“Molly and Mabel and Dorothy and Betsy and Delia and Timmie,” Maida
started again, “all of you, listen! You are the Little Six. This is
your playground. There are some toys in the house; dolls and doll’s
dishes and doll’s furniture, which you can bring here to play house
with. But you are not to go far from the Rock. And when you hear the
cow-bell, you must always return to the Little House.”

“Is that all,” Laura asked eagerly, “and now can we leave the Little
Six and go exploring?”

The Little Six waited, dancing with excitement, impatient for the first
time in their lives to have the big children go.

“Not yet,” Maida responded, “just one more thing for the Little Six.”

She led the way around House Rock to its high end. From there another
well-worn path started off. The children followed her down its curving
way. Not far from House Rock, it came into a big circular enclosure;
grassy and surrounded by trees.

“What’s this, Maida?” Arthur asked.

“It’s a Fairy Ring,” Maida answered solemnly.

“A Fairy Ring,” Dicky repeated in an awed tone. “Is it really a Fairy
Ring?”

“That’s what I’ve always called it,” Maida replied. “I don’t know what
it is, if it isn’t a Fairy Ring. I have never seen anything like
it--except in England and there they always call them Fairy Rings, and
besides nobody knows what it was used for.”

Arthur strolled around the entire circumference of the Ring keenly
examining the ground and the surrounding trees.

“It looks like a wood clearing to me,” he said in a low tone to Maida
when he rejoined the group.

Betsy, silenced for the first time in her five years of experience,
suddenly exploded. “Oh goody! goody! goody!” she exclaimed. “Now the
fairies will come and play with us. I’ve always wanted to see a fairy.
Now I’m going to see one!”

“I don’t believe they’s any such things as fairies,” Timmie declared
sturdily.

“Oh Timmie,” Dorothy Clark remonstrated, “I should think you’d be
ashamed of yourself. Of course they’s fairies.”

“Well, anyway,” Timmie still sturdily stood his ground, “if they are, I
don’t believe they’ll come and play with us.”

“Well, I believe they will,” Mabel Clark reinforced her sister.

But Betsy was capering up and down the length and breadth of the Fairy
Ring. “I know the fairies will come!” she sang aloud. “I know the
fairies will come! I know the fairies will come!”

When the older children left the Fairy Ring, all six of the little
children were capering too. The last thing they heard was Delia’s
mimicking words: “I know the fairz tum! I know the fairz tum! I know
the fairz tum!”

“That’s over,” Maida said. “I told Granny Flynn,” she explained, “that
I’d show the little children a nice place to play. Now let’s go into
the living room and talk. There are a whole lot of things that I’ve got
to tell you that I haven’t had time to tell you yet.”

Although it was a June day--and as warm and sunny as June knows how
to be--they gathered about the big fireplace where already logs were
piled and ready to burn. The boys sat on the fender; the girls drew up
chairs. After they were all comfortable Maida began.

“Father says that this first week we can all rest. It’s to be our
vacation, but after that, we’ve got to work. Father says that there are
some things that every girl ought to know how to do and some things
every boy ought to know. And we’re going to learn those things living
in the Little House.”

Rosie’s eyes danced. “Hurry!” she urged Maida.

Maida drew a long breath. “There’s so much of it. You see there’s
a good deal of work about the house, although it seems so small.
Floribel--she’s the colored maid--is going to do the cooking and Zeke,
her husband, will attend to most of the outside work. Of course Granny
Flynn and Mrs. Dore will run everything. But we girls are to take care
of our own rooms and the flower garden.”

“Oh goody, goody!” Rosie exclaimed, “I love flowers!”

“We are to keep the house decorated with flowers. And once every week,
we are to do the housekeeping for the entire day--that’s Floribel’s and
Zeke’s day off. That day, we have to plan the meals; do the marketing;
cook the food; wash and wipe the dishes.”

“Gee, I’m glad I’m not a girl,” Harold said jubilantly.

“Oh your turn comes now,” Maida declared. “You boys have got to weed
and water the vegetable garden; gather vegetables whenever they are
needed; run errands; take care of the tennis court.”

“For my part,” Laura declared, “I wish we did _all_ the cooking. I love
it.”

“You wouldn’t love it if you did it for sixteen people,” Maida
commented in a scandalized tone.

“It’s just as though we were all alone by ourselves,” Rosie declared
jubilantly.

“We are,” Maida stated. “We’re three miles from the Big House. We
shan’t see any of father’s company. Father has closed one of the
roads that leads to the Little House and the other is a secret one
that nobody but he and Botkins and I know. Your parents are invited
to visit you whenever they wish. Of course father will come to see us
occasionally. And let me tell you he will come when we least expect
it. And if everything isn’t in apple-pie-order--Of course there’s the
telephone if we should need help--or anything happened--But otherwise
we’re almost all alone in the world.”

“It’s like a story book,” Dicky commented.

“Maida!” Rosie said, “you speak of a flower garden and a vegetable
garden but I don’t remember that you showed them to us last night.”

“No, I didn’t,” Maida explained. “We were all getting so tired. But
I’ll show them to you now. Come!”

She led the way through the living room; through the dining room to
the back door of the house. Then she turned north. “This room is the
laundry,” she said. “And here,” pointing to an enclosure, set off by a
high vine-grown lattice, “is the drying yard.” They were now walking on
a path which ran between the house and a file of cypresses, standing
trim and tall and so close that they made a hedge. Maida led the way
to the corner where there was an opening. There a great rectangle
surrounded by cypresses was a garden--all roses. The bushes were
already in rich bloom, great creamy white ones and great pinky white
ones. Others were deep pink, golden yellow, a rich dark crimson.

“This is the rose garden,” Maida explained. “Beyond,” she led the
way into still another cypress-guarded square, “is the old-fashioned
garden. There are nasturtiums here and phlox and pansies and peonies
and lots of other things I can’t remember, and in the fall there’ll be
dahlias and asters.”

Rosie shook herself with joy. “I shall love working in this garden,”
she declared. “This afternoon let’s fill all the vases in the house
with roses.”

“All right,” Maida agreed absently. “Now I’m going to show you the
vegetable garden.”

“I know where that is,” Arthur boasted. “I got up early and explored.”

Maida led the way past the croquet ground, past the tennis court to
another cypress-bordered square. Here, in parallel lines, were rows
of green sprouts. The earth must have been turned over in the spring,
indeed it might have been turned over in the previous fall, rich loam
and cultivator added. It looked like freshly-grated chocolate.

“Gracious, I think I could make fudge of that earth,” Rosie exclaimed.

“How tidy it looks,” Laura commented.

“Yes,” Maida agreed. “That’s because the gardener has put it in perfect
condition for you boys. But after this, you’ve got to take care of it
yourselves. And weeds grow like--like--” She paused for a comparison.

“Like sixty!” Arthur finished it for her. “I know; I’ve weeded my
aunt’s garden in Maine. Believe me it’s hot work. The thing to do is to
work a little every day--that’s the only way you can keep ahead of the
weeds.”

“Sure, early in the morning!” Dicky remarked.

“How did you know that, Dicky?” Maida asked curiously.

“I just happened to read it in a book,” Dicky explained.

“Now, when I tell you,” Maida went on, as one suddenly remembering the
rest of her instructions, “that we shall have to go to bed at nine
and get up at seven, I have told you all I have to tell you. Father’s
very strict about our sleep. He says we must have ten hours. There’s
one exception. Saturday night, when we can sit up until ten and Sunday
morning when we can sleep until eight. Now, how would you like to go to
the Magic Mirror?”

“Oh I’ve been on pins and needles every moment since we got up wanting
to go to that Pond,” Rosie declared, “but then I want to see everything
at once.”

“Arthur, do you know how to row a canoe?” Dicky asked.

“No, I don’t,” Arthur admitted.

“I do,” said Harold with a slight accent of superiority, “but you don’t
_row_ a canoe. You row a _boat_ and you _paddle_ a canoe.”

“Does it take long to learn?” Dicky asked with great interest.

“No, and it’s as easy as pie when you get the hang of it, but you fall
overboard a hundred times before you do that.”

“I can’t swim,” Dicky said disconsolately.

“Never mind, Dicky,” Maida comforted him, “you’ll soon learn. Can you
swim Rosie?”

“Yes. I’ll teach you Dicky. You begin first with water wings and then--”

In the meantime, following Maida’s lead, they were moving north.

“Hi!” Arthur remonstrated. “The way to the Pond--I mean the Magic
Mirror--is over in that direction.”

“This is another way to it,” Maida explained. “Once you’ve taken it,
you’ll never take any other.”

A little path disengaged itself from the trees which fringed the lawn,
began to wind away, almost hidden, among the trees. The children
followed Maida in Indian file. For a few moments they could hear Granny
Flynn calling to the younger children; then the voices gradually died
away; bird voices took their places; the calm and the hush of the deep
forest fell upon them.

“Oh isn’t it wonderful!” Rosie said in an awed tone. “It makes me feel
like--It makes me feel like--Well, it’s like being in church.”

On both sides the fresh green of the trees made an intricate screen
through which the sunlight poured and splashed. The birds kept up
their calls; and many insects called too. A bee buzzed through a tiny
interval of silence; then a crow cawed. The road turned, dipped, sank.

“Isn’t this pretty?” Maida exclaimed as they descended into a hollow
with high, thick, blossoming wild-rose bushes on both sides.

Involuntarily, the Big Six stopped and looked about them. They stood
in a little dimple in the earth--bushes growing thick and high on its
sides.

“How hot it is down here,” Laura commented, “and how sweet it smells.”

“I call it the Bosky Dingle,” Maida explained.

“What does Bosky Dingle mean?” Dicky enquired.

“It’s a poetry phrase,” Maida told him. “It means a kind of woody
hollow.”

“There’s the Pond!” called the practical Harold.

The children broke into a run.

They came out on a cleared space with a boat-house and a long jetty,
leading from a newly-shingled shed into the water. “This is for the
canoes,” Maida explained. She unlocked the door and showed a single
wide empty room.

“Oh let’s go home and get the canoes and bring them down here,” Arthur
explained. “I’m wild to try them.”

“It will take two to carry each canoe,” Harold explained, “and we need
bathing suits.”

“There are bathing suits at home for all of us,” Maida explained.
“Shall we turn back?” She asked this question politely, but she said it
a little reluctantly.

Rosie seemed to see her reluctance.

“Did you have another plan, Maida?” Rosie demanded.

“Well you see,” Maida answered slowly, “there’s a gypsy camp half way
round the Magic Mirror and I thought you might like to visit it.”




CHAPTER VI

AFTERNOON


“A gypsy camp!” Arthur repeated. “Sure I’d love to go.”

“Gypsies!” Laura shrank a little. “I think I’d be scared of gypsies.”

“You wouldn’t be scared of these gypsies,” Maida promised. “I’ve known
them ever since I was a little girl. I am very fond of them.”

“Well let’s go,” Arthur said, shifting from one foot to another in
impatient excitement.

The procession started again.

“Tell us more about the gypsies, Maida,” Arthur demanded at once.

“There isn’t very much to tell, except that they’ve come here every
summer ever since I can remember and, indeed, long before I was born.
Father has always permitted them to camp on this ground, rent free. I
don’t seem to remember much about them when I was very little, except
that I used to go and buy baskets with Granny Flynn and they always
told Granny’s fortune. ‘Cross my palm with silver,’ they say. That
means, ‘Put some money in my hand!’”

“How many are there?” Dicky enquired.

“Not many. Perhaps a dozen. Let me see there’s Aunt Save and Uncle Save
the father and mother, and Aunt Vashti, the old, old grandmother. She
would frighten even you, Rosie--She looks like a witch. But she’s very
kind and I’m very fond of her. And there’s Esther and Miriam, their
daughters and Hector and Tom, their husbands; and their children. And
then there are always three or four relatives--different ones every
year--who come up from the South with them.”

“They go South then every winter?” Arthur continued.

“Yes,” Maida answered. She continued to give them her memories of the
gypsies through the rest of the long, shaded, greenly-winding walk, and
the children asked many questions. Presently the trail expanded ahead
into a clearing.

“There they are!” Arthur called.

The clearing was surrounded by pines. Against this background, a group
of tents pointed their weather-stained pyramids up from the brown
pine-needles. In the middle, a fire was burning. A black pot, hanging
from a triangle of stout sticks, emitted a cloud of steam and a busy
bubbling. A wagon stood off among the trees and tethered by a long
rope two horses were feeding. A trio of hounds, two old and one young,
rose as the children approached; made slowly in their direction. An
old woman, so wrinkled that her face looked as though it could never
have been smooth, with great hoops of gold in her ears, a red kerchief
on her head and a black one around her neck, stood watching the pot. A
little distance off, a younger woman, buxom and brown, mended. Three
men, one middle-aged, two younger, sat smoking.

“Those dogs won’t bite us Maida,” Laura said in a panic, “will they?”

“Oh no,” Maida said, “they know me. Hi Lize! Hi Tige!” she called.
The hounds burst into a run; came bounding to her side; leaped up
and licked her face. Maida staggered under the onslaught, but Arthur
expertly seized their collars, held them.

The excitement in the gypsy camp was immediate. “It’s Maida!” ran a
murmur from mouth to mouth. The young woman leaped to her feet. The old
woman, less alert but still nimble, sprang from the grass also. They
all, even the men, came forward, smiling eagerly. Maida shook hands
with them and introduced her friends.

“When did you get here?” Maida asked. “I’ve had Zeke come down here
every day for a week looking for you--every day until yesterday, when
in the excitement of our arrival, he neglected to come.”

“We came yesterday,” they explained. They were most of them, dark, with
longish hair and flashing dark eyes but their look was very friendly.
They asked Maida a multitude of questions about her father and Granny
Flynn, her trip abroad. Finally Maida asked them if they had any
baskets ready for sale.

“A few,” Mrs. Savory said looking pleased. “Oh Silva, bring the baskets
out! Maida you have never seen Silva and Tyma, have you? They’re my
sister’s children. My sister died last summer and now they’re living
with us.”

A voice answered, “In a moment.” It was a child’s voice and yet it
had a curious grown-up accent as of an unusual decision of character.
The doors of one of the tents parted and a girl’s head appeared in
the opening. The children stared at her. For an instant nobody spoke.
The head disappeared. When the girl emerged, her hands were full of
baskets. Behind her came a lad very like her but older.

Silva Burle was a slender brown girl. She did not look any older than
Rosie; but she was much taller--and she was as tawny as Rosie was dark.
Her hair, a strange amber color, hung straight to her shoulders where
the ends turned upwards, not in a curl, but in a big soft wave. Her
eyes were not big but they were long; they were like bits of shining
amber set under her thin straight brows. Her skin was a tanned amber
too. She wore a much-patched rusty dark skirt with a white middy
blouse, a tattered, yellow-ribbon tie.

Tyma, her brother, was slim too but strong-looking, active. He had a
dark skin and hair so black that there was a purple steeliness about
it. In all this swarthy coloring, his eyes, a clear blue, seemed
strange and unexpected. His brows were thick and they lowered as the
eyes under them contemplated the group of children. Silva’s lips curled
disdainfully upwards.

Silva nodded briefly when her aunt performed the simple introduction,
“This is Maida and her friends, Silva,” but Tyma merely stared. Then
turning his back, he strolled away to where the horses were feeding;
untethered one of them. With a single leap of his athletic body, he
was on its back. In another instant, the green leaves of the forest
closed around him as he disappeared riding bare-back into it.

“What beautiful baskets you have Silva!” Maida said politely.

Silva did not deign to answer. She spread her handiwork out on
the table which stood not far from the fire and then, leaving her
prospective customers to their choice, went over to the fire; sat down
before it, her back to the children.

Aunt Save seemed to feel dimly that something was wrong. She moved over
to the table and began displaying the baskets.

Maida made an effort to relieve her embarrassment. “Oh Aunt Save,” she
said, “what do you suppose is the first thing I am going to do when I
get time?” Without waiting for an answer, she went swiftly on. “I’m
going to wash and iron all Lucy’s clothes and pack them nicely away in
a little old hair-cloth trunk which I found in the attic. Lucy,” she
explained to her friends, “is a great big rag-baby doll that Aunt Save
made for me when I was little. It’s as big as a baby two years old. I
was fonder of it than any doll I have ever had, and so Granny Flynn
made it a whole outfit of clothes--all the things a baby should have.
I am going to pack them away and keep them for my daughter.”

“Oh, do you mean that rag-baby doll that’s sitting in the little chair
in your room?” Rosie asked. “And that little queer brown trunk under
the window where the tree is?”

This slant of the conversation seemed to interest Silva for she turned
a little; listened intently to what followed.

“Yes, that’s Lucy,” Maida answered. “All her clothes are in that trunk.”

“When I made that doll for you,” Aunt Save said, “I didn’t think you’d
play with it long. None of us thought you were going to live.”

“That was before my illness,” Maida explained to the other children,
“when I was so lame.”

“I told your father,” Aunt Save went on, “that there was only one thing
that could save you. And that was to go South and live with us in the
piny woods and be a little Romany for a year. But he couldn’t seem to
let you go for so long.”

“Oh Aunt Save!” Maida exclaimed. “How I would have loved that! However
it all came out right because father gave me my Little Shop and I made
all these new friends.”




CHAPTER VII

TWILIGHT


“I think that Silva Burle was just horrid!” Rosie burst out suddenly.
“Just horrid!” she repeated with an enraged accent. “I never took such
a dislike to a girl in my life. I just simply despise her!”

The three little girls were in the rose garden. It was just after
luncheon and Granny Flynn had said they must do something in the way of
quiet exercise, before they went to swim in the Magic Mirror. They had
decided to decorate the house with flowers.

“She was rather horrid, wasn’t she?” Maida agreed absently. “So was her
brother.”

“You expect boys to have bad manners,” Laura commented scathingly, “but
a girl ought to behave herself better than that. She made me so mad I
wanted to stick my tongue out at her.”

“I wanted to box her ears,” announced Rosie fiercely.

“She seemed to take such a dislike to us--just on sight!” Maida went
on. “I don’t understand it. We didn’t do anything to her. We--”

“Why we’d never even seen her before,” Rosie interrupted in a crescendo
of irritation.

“She acted as though,” Maida went straight on, “she was afraid of us
for some reason, as though she thought we were going to do--” She
paused--“well I don’t know what,” she concluded.

“I hope we never see the disagreeable thing again,” Laura said.

“We probably will,” Maida declared. “We’ll be going to the gypsy camp
all the time, but of course she won’t come to the Little House.”

“If she does,” Rosie threatened, “I’ll tell her to go home.”

Rosie looked cross and she was cross. Ever since the return from the
gypsy camp her tempestuous brows had not smoothed out their knots. Her
eyes alternately burned and flashed and her cheeks were like red roses
on fire.

Characteristically--because she wore red whenever she could--Rosie had
gathered only the crimson roses. She held a great bunch of them now,
and she stood stripping them of their thorns. Laura’s roses were pink;
Maida’s yellow.

“I should think this would be enough,” Maida suggested in a moment.
“Let’s put them in the vases.”

“Shall we mix them all together?” Rosie asked. “One color to each room
is really prettier. Just think how lovely the living room will be with
these great red roses everywhere.”

“Rosie, you shall decide where the flowers go to-day, and the next time
Laura, and the next time me. That’s the only fair way,” Maida declared.

Indoors, Maida took them to the long closet lined with shelves, lighted
by one window and furnished with a small sink, a table and three
chairs, which she called the Flower Closet. On the shelves were vases
and bowls of all colors and sizes; some high and slender; some squatty
and low; of glass and china. For a few minutes conversation languished.
The three little girls were all busy making their selection from
these receptacles; cutting away too long stems and too heavy foliage;
removing thorns.

Rosie as usual--her movements were always as swift as
lightning--finished her work first. She came into the living room
where Maida and Laura--the result of Laura’s idea--were trying bunches
of yellow roses in low jars against bunches of pink ones in high ones.

“I wish I could get that Silva Burle out of my mind,” Rosie burst out
with a sudden return of her irritation. “I keep thinking of her and I
get so mad I’d just like to--”

“Granny says we can go down to the Pond now,” Arthur called suddenly,
popping in the door. “We boys have been lugging the three canoes down
to the Magic Mirror and believe me it’s some hot work. Granny says that
we must put on our bathing suits here to-day.”

Boys and girls raced to their rooms. In a surprisingly brief time they
were back again in bathing suits and bathing shoes; the girls with
rubber caps in brilliant colors.

“Granny says, as Dicky’s the only one that can’t swim, we must all
promise to look after him,” Arthur added warningly on their way to the
Pond.

“I can look after myself,” Dicky remarked huffily.

“I’m only telling you what Granny said,” Arthur stated. Apparently
Granny had put other responsibilities on him because he went on. “I
know you swim in deep water, Rosie, because I’ve seen you, and you too
Harold. But how about you Laura?”

“Well--I’ll show you,” Laura promised caustically.

“You’ll have to,” Arthur told her, “before I’ll let you go over your
head.” He turned to Maida. “How about you?”

“I’m not a fast swimmer nor a strong one,” Maida declared, “but I am
quite accustomed to deep water. I used to go over the side of the yacht
with father every morning in the Mediterranean, and I can swim forever
without getting tired out.”

“All right,” Arthur said. And then, “All in that’s going in!” he
shouted suddenly as the jetty came in sight. He burst into a run and
the file of children raced after him. Over into the water they went in
five tempestuous dives. Only Dicky remained watching them. They came
up almost simultaneously. Arthur and Harold, as a matter of natatorial
compliment, threw into each other’s faces the mud and weeds they had
brought up in their hands. Then they all struck for the middle of the
Pond. They swam with varying degrees of speed--Arthur first as became
his superior size and strength, his superior skill at all things.
Curiously enough Laura, who cut through the water like a thrown knife,
kept a close second to him. The others struggled behind, Maida always
in the rear.

They turned over and stared into the shining sky.

“Now tell us a story Maida!” Rosie said.

Maida began obediently. “Once upon a time,” she said to the
accompaniment of five pairs of hands beating the water, “there lived
a little girl by the name of Rosie. She was probably the naughtiest
little girl in the world--”

“How about Silva Burle?” Rosie interrupted quickly. “You forget her.”

“I’ll tell you what you _do_ forget,” Laura took it up, “poor Dicky
standing there all alone on the pier.”

“Gee,” was all Arthur said, but he turned and swam back, the rest
following him.

“I’m going to give you your first swimming lesson now,” Arthur called
to the disconsolate figure watching them. Arthur swam in shore. He
commanded Dicky to wade into the pond up to his waist.

“Now,” he said, putting one hand under Dicky’s chin, “drop down slowly
until you’re lying flat on the water. I’ll hold you by the chin and by
your bathing suit in the back. Now listen! You’re to do exactly what I
tell you. You’ll think I’m going to drop you but I cross my throat I
won’t. But you see that you follow my directions.”

In a few minutes Dicky was paddling frantically, his eyes almost
bulging out of his head, his lips pursed together; his waving arms and
kicking feet beating the water almost to a lather. “Breathe the way
you always do!” Arthur was shouting. “You poor fish, open your mouth.
Suppose you do swallow some water. It won’t hurt you. Haven’t you ever
drunk any water in your life? Don’t kick up and down. Make your legs go
the way a frog’s does. Don’t go so _fast_. Now I’ll count for you. One!
Two! Three! Four! Breathe, you poor prune! How do you expect you’re
going to swim without any breath in your body?”

The others paddled about, adding their jeers or suggestions; but at
times they frequently deserted for a longer swim. Laura displayed a
number of water tricks--she was as graceful in her swimming as in her
dancing and for a short dash she could go fast. She dove forward,
sideways, and backwards. She sat upright in the water. She turned over
and over in a somersault. Her strength was nothing to that of Rosie’s
however, who seemed never to tire of any physical exercise.

“That will be enough for to-day, Dicky,” Arthur decided finally. “Now
put on these water wings and practice the way I’ve been telling you.
Breathe the way you always do and don’t go too fast. Don’t go into deep
water yet. If the wings should fall off or bust--”

“Burst!” corrected Rosie promptly.

“Collapse,” Arthur substituted with unexpected elegance, “you’ll sink
like a stone.”

“I’ll stay near the shore,” Dicky promised docilely. “You bet,” he
added, “I don’t want to make a hole in the water.”

Shaking off his pedagogical duties, Arthur set off alone for the
middle of the Pond, swimming with the long powerful strokes which
characterized him, his head almost under water.

“What a stroke he has!” Maida commented admiringly. “I’d give anything
if I could cut through the water like that. Why--why who’s that?”

Two heads appeared bobbing on the water at the other side of the
lake. No one of the children had seen anybody emerge from the woods.
The strangers must have come around the curve. The heads came forward
straight towards the middle of the lake. Arthur had reached his goal;
was floating placidly, his arms folded at the back of his neck.
Involuntarily, the other children stood silent and watched. Nearer the
two heads came to Arthur--nearer and nearer. One of them had thick
tossed black hair; the other lighter hair, satiny as the inside of a
nut where the sun caught it on the top of the head; wet and dark as
strings of seaweed in the neck.

“It’s Silva and Tyma Burle,” Rosie exclaimed suddenly. “Oh how they can
swim!”

The two young gypsies had drawn near enough to Arthur for the children
to measure their progress.

“I never saw a girl swim like that,” Laura said with a touch of envy.
“She swims just like a boy.”

Arthur, his ears sunk below the level of the water, had apparently
heard nothing. But now suddenly he threw himself on his side and
paddling just enough to keep afloat, watched the approaching pair in
amazement.

On the Burles came, their eyes fixed on Arthur, their expressions quite
non-committal. Arthur waited.

Suddenly a terrible thing happened! Silva threw up her hands and
screamed. Tyma, a little in advance, turned and swam to her rescue, but
once he had reached his sister’s side she caught him about the neck. It
was all over in a second. The two sank together. The children on the
jetty shrieked. Maida burst into tears. Harold started out at once for
the fatal spot. Rosie made as though to follow him.

“Don’t Rosie,” Laura said with sudden coolness. “You’ll only be in the
way.”

In the meantime, Arthur swam instantly for the spot where brother and
sister had disappeared. He dived at once; staying under the water for
what, to the frightened group on shore, seemed an incredible time. But
he came up; filled his lungs with air; dived again. For the third time
he appeared on the surface. For the third time he dived.

Suddenly many rods away on the top of the water appeared two
heads--Silva’s and Tyma’s. Simultaneously Arthur came up gasping
for air. The Burles managed to wave a hand; broke into high jeering
laughter; then swam rapidly towards the other shore. By this time,
Harold had reached Arthur’s side. Together they started after the
practical jokers but both the boys were spent with their first long
swim of the year. After a while, they turned and rejoined their friends
on the shore.

“Can you beat that?” Arthur demanded. His face had taken on the black
look that rage, with him, always developed. Rosie’s eyes darted
lightnings. Maida had stopped crying and her eyes had changed too. Not
glowering like Rosie’s, they had grown suddenly dark. Laura looked
stupefied. Dicky had turned white. Great shadows jumped out under his
eyes.

“That was the most dreadful thing I ever saw in my life,” Maida
asserted in a voice, almost a whisper. “You might have drowned, Arthur.”

“I’ll get even with them for that,” Arthur said in a quiet voice. “You
wait.”

“I don’t blame you,” Rosie declared. “I’m so mad I don’t know what I
wouldn’t do.”

“I don’t believe they’re worth taking any notice of,” Laura decided
contemptuously, “gypsies like that. Why don’t you tell their aunt,
Maida?”

“I’d like to,” Maida answered, “but I guess I won’t. I like Aunt Save
too much.”

“Anyway,” Harold pointed out, “it isn’t anything that concerns them.
It’s all between us children.”

“No, I wouldn’t want any grown people to get mixed up in this at all,”
Arthur said. “I wouldn’t say anything about it to Granny Flynn or Mrs.
Dore. It’ll only worry them and nobody’s the worse for it. We didn’t do
anything to be ashamed of anyway.”

“Ashamed of!” Rosie echoed stormily. “You were only trying to save
their lives.”

“No,” Maida agreed, “I won’t say anything about it. I think you’re
right Arthur.”

The Burles had reached the opposite shore by this time. Before they
disappeared into the woods, they raised their voices in a long derisive
shout.

As Arthur listened his face grew blacker and blacker. “Do all the
yelling you want!” he called, “I’ll get even with you, my fine young
gypsies!”




CHAPTER VIII

NIGHT


The women were too busy to take any notice of the children when they
returned except to ask them if they had a good swim.

“I feel like reading,” Maida said with a determined air. She marched
into the library. “There’s a book here I haven’t read for a long time,
_At the Back of the North Wind_.” She went on as though talking to
herself. “It’s one of the loveliest stories I ever read. I don’t know
but what it’s my favorite of all. I feel like reading it now. It’s so
cool ... there’s a great beautiful woman in it ... the North Wind....”
Her voice melted into silence, as her hand seized a worn brown book.
She dropped into one of the big chairs; seemed to forget entirely about
her companions.

The others--partly because there seemed nothing else to do--followed
her example.

“Oh, here’s _A Journey to the Centre of the Earth_!” Dicky announced
joyously. “I haven’t seen it since Maida took it to Europe.” He
absorbed himself in the big thick volume.

Rosie and Laura contented themselves respectively with _Little Men_
and _Little Women_, and Harold began for the third time _Kidnapped_.
But Arthur found a newly published book describing the exploration of
Africa in a flying machine. He pored over it; gradually became absorbed.

It had been late afternoon when they returned. Nearly an hour drifted
by. That coolness, which announces the approach of dusk, set in.

“Well,” Maida said at last, breathing a long relieved sigh, “I’ve got
rid of my temper. If I hadn’t taken a book when I did, I’m sure I’d
have burst into pieces. If everybody has read all he wants to, let’s
try the tennis court.”

They tried the tennis court (although only Maida and the two Lathrops
played tennis) but to such good effect and with so great a fascination
that they returned to it after supper. Arthur, as was to be expected
with his coolness and game sense, progressed rapidly under Harold’s
instructions. The others found it the most difficult thing they had
ever attempted. They were hot and tired when finally approaching dark
made it impossible for them to see the balls.

They adjourned to the Tree Room where, in hammock and chairs, they
talked and talked.

Gradually the talk grew desultory; sank to an occasional silence.

“I was rummaging about in the barn early this morning,” Arthur said
out of the reflective quiet in which he had long been immersed, “and
I found all kinds of things in a big chest--base-balls and bats;
foot-ball stuff and boxing gloves. Do you know how to box, Harold?”

“No,” Harold replied, “never tried it.”

“Want to learn?” Arthur inquired. “I’ll teach you. I’d like the
practice.”

“Sure,” Harold said. “When will we begin?”

“To-morrow,” Arthur responded.

“What do you want to practice boxing for, Arthur?” Rosie asked
curiously.

“Oh I thought I might need it sometime,” Arthur answered evasively. He
smiled into the dark.

“Say!” Rosie burst out suddenly, “did anybody besides me get sun-burned
to-day?”

“Well, I didn’t mention it,” Laura answered sleepily, “but I feel as if
my face were on fire.”

“Oh! Oh!” Maida exclaimed contritely. “I forgot to warn you to be sure
to wear hats this first day or two. Are you burnt, Arthur?”

“To a cinder,” Arthur declared, “but I’ve been burnt before. I don’t
mind it so very much.”

“And you Dicky?” Maida went on.

Dicky’s answer was a grimace.

“And Harold?” Maida continued in a despairing voice.

“I shall be one big blister to-morrow,” Harold prophesied grimly.

“Oh my goodness!” wailed Maida futilely. “It’s all my fault. Well it’s
half-past eight,” she added after a pause. “According to rules we can
sit up until nine, but I’m going to bed now. I never was so tired in
all my life.”

“I’m falling asleep where I am,” Rosie admitted, “and as for Laura, she
_is_ asleep.”

This was the first day at the Little House.




CHAPTER IX

PLANS


“Now,” Maida announced at breakfast a week later, “we’ve had all
the vacation we’re going to get--at least all that the Big Six get.
To-morrow begins our work. Father said we could plan it ourselves how
it was to be done and unless our plans were bad ones, we could keep
right on with them. Now I propose that, right after breakfast, you
boys go to the barn and make a program of your work. We girls will
stay here and make a program for ourselves. You remember what it is
you’re expected to do?” Notwithstanding protests that they remembered
everything, she recited briefly again to the boys the list of their
duties.

After breakfast, as directed, the Big Six divided. The boys proceeded
to the barn. The girls settled themselves in the big, comfortable
living-room, began to discuss the work that they were to do. Rosie, in
some inexplicable way, soon took control; was handling the situation in
the practical, efficient way that was typical of her.

“Do you know how to make a bed, Maida?” she asked.

“No,” Maida answered dolefully, “I never made one in my life. It looks
easy though.”

“It’s easy to make a bed _badly_,” Rosie said with emphasis. “How about
you Laura?”

“Well,” Laura replied slowly, “I _have_ made one.”

Rosie groaned. “I know what it will look like,” she commented. “Now I
_can_ make a bed,” she boasted. “Right after we finish this, I’ll take
you upstairs and show you both. Now, how about cooking?”

Maida looked aghast. “I never cooked anything in my life.”

“That’s what I thought,” Rosie remarked grimly. “How about cooking,
Laura?”

“I can make pop-overs, one-two-three-four cake and cup-custard,” Laura
stated proudly. “And, oh yes, fudge!”

“Is that all?” Rosie asked scornfully.

“Yes,” Laura admitted.

“Can either of you make a fire?” Rosie went on.

Two meek _noes_ were the answer.

“Well, as far as I can see,” Rosie decided, “we’ve got to begin at the
very beginning. Now I’ve been thinking this matter over and it seems
to me there’s only one fair way of doing it and that is for us to weed
the flower garden _all together_ every morning; each one of us to take
care of their own room--”

“_Her_ own room,” Maida corrected. She added roguishly, “I thought you
were beginning to feel too important, Rosie.”

“All right, smarty-cat! _Her_ own room. Then when it comes to
Floribel’s day out, we’ll take turns in planning the three meals. But
every Thursday, one of us must have the day in charge. On that day the
other two are only assistants.”

“Rosie,” Maida exclaimed, “I think you are perfectly wonderful! That
seems to me to be absolutely all right. Don’t you think so, Laura?”

“Yes,” Laura answered equally enthusiastic, “I think it’s marvelous.”

“Well, then,” Rosie began again, “let’s begin to plan meals for this
Thursday.”

They were deep in this interesting task when the boys returned from the
barn. They compared plans.

The boys’ plan did not differ so very much from the girls’ except that,
when it came to the work in the vegetable garden they had decided to
weed in rotation. Also in rotation, they were to sprinkle garden and
tennis court nightly, to roll the tennis court daily. Each boy was to
make his own bed. There was a typewriter in the library and they spent
the next half-hour typing out these plans and making as many copies as
there were children. Then they pinned them up in their rooms.

“Say,” Arthur declared suddenly, “you girls have got to show us how to
make a bed. I suppose I could make one, after a fashion, but I never
have. I don’t know how to begin.”

“I do,” said Harold unexpectedly. “I learned how to make beds last
summer at camp. I’ll show you.”

“Show us now,” Arthur demanded.

The three boys started in the direction of the barn.

“Let’s go too,” Rosie whispered. “Isn’t it a joke to think of boys
trying to make beds? I’d like to see the bed after Harold has finished
with it.”

The girls tagged the boys; followed them upstairs into the barn.

At once Harold began in the most business-like way to strip the bed. It
was apparent that on arising he had pulled the covers back to air. Then
with swift, efficient movements, he began to re-make it.

“Goodness!” Rosie exclaimed humbly in a moment, “I can’t make a bed as
well as that. I’m going to learn too.”

Indeed, the bed looked like a mathematical problem which had just been
solved, and as Harold proceeded to clean up the room in the way he
had learned at camp, the others followed him with respectful glances.
Harold tidied the three chiffoniers and the three closets. When he
finished, the room had a look of military perfection.

“Now,” he commanded, “Arthur you make your bed and Dicky you make
yours; I’ll supervise the job.”

“I’m going right back to my room and re-make my bed, Harold,” Maida
declared. “It looks as though somebody had driven an automobile over
it.”

“I will too,” admitted the humbled Rosie. “Think of having a boy teach
you how to make a bed!”

The boys rejoined the girls after a while and again they went over
their plans. In the midst of it all, Granny Flynn came in to see what
was keeping them so quiet. They showed her the typewritten schedules
and she approved them highly. “They ought to work like a charm,” she
averred.

And indeed, it seemed as though her prophecy were a true one. About
the same hour the next morning, twin alarm-clocks rang out; one in the
barn, another in Maida’s room. Very soon after, a sleepy boy--Arthur
had volunteered for the first day in the garden--emerged from the barn;
three sleepy girls from the house. They weeded busily for half an hour.
In the meantime, another sleepy boy was rolling the tennis court which
had been hosed the night before. Then came breakfast. Immediately after
breakfast, rooms were made speckless.

With the girls, this continued to be a kind of game. They not only
prided themselves on keeping their chambers clean, but they actually
tried to match the flowers they placed there to the chintzes and
wallpapers.

“It’s fun to take care of these darling rooms,” Rosie declared again
and again. “They’re so little I feel as though we ought to buy a doll’s
broom and a doll’s carpet-sweeper and a doll’s dust-pan and brush. I
never saw such sweet furniture in all my life, and how I love the roof
slanting down like that!”

“I feel that way too--exactly as though I were putting a doll’s house
in order,” Laura coincided happily.

As for the boys--they bothered with no flowers. Indeed a military
plainness prevailed in the barn. This of course meant also a military
neatness to which no one of them was accustomed but Harold. Harold
constituted himself critic-in-chief. And he proved a stern critic
indeed. He would not permit the sheets on the bed to deviate one hair’s
breadth from perfect horizontality or absolute verticality. A bit of
paper on the floor elicited an immediate rebuke. He even stipulated the
exact spots on the chiffonier-tops where brush, comb and mirror were to
be kept and he saw that the other boys kept them there. The victims of
his passion for military order had to roll their pajamas in a certain
way and put them in a certain place. A similar neatness characterized
the closets. Coats and trousers had to be hung on special hangers; ties
on special hooks. As for bureau drawers--Harold maintained that there
was a place for everything and woe to Dicky or Arthur when everything
was not in its place.

Immediately after the rooms were done in the morning came errands. The
first morning, Granny let the Big Six do all the marketing, even what
could have been done over the telephone; so that they could get to know
where the shops were. They proceeded on their bicycles, with Maida for
a guide, to Satuit Center. Maida took them to the Post Office; to the
butcher; the grocer; the coalman; the wood-man; the hardware shop; the
ice cream establishment--even to the little dry-goods shops and to the
cobbler. She introduced them to all these village authorities.

“After to-day,” Maida explained, “we’ll have to do only part of
Granny’s marketing for her. And only one of us need attend to it.”

“Oh let’s do it every day--and all together,” Dicky burst out
impulsively.

“You think you’ll enjoy that because it’s new to you,” Maida laughed,
“but you’ll soon get tired of it. No, we’d better take turns.”

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday went by. More and more certainly Granny
Flynn’s prophecy seemed on the way to be proved true. The twin sets of
plans worked perfectly. It looked as though the summer were going by
without a hitch. Then came Thursday--Floribel’s and Zeke’s day out.




CHAPTER X

RESPONSIBILITY


Really, as Rosie pointed out, the work for Floribel’s and Zeke’s day
out began the morning before. You had to make sure then that there was
enough raw material in the house for the three meals of the next day.
Therefore, early Wednesday morning before they went to market, the
three girls sat down at the typewriter and worked out the program of
their three meals.

“Rosie, you take charge of this first day,” Maida urged, “you’ve had
so much more experience than Laura or me. Don’t you think she ought,
Laura?”

“I certainly do,” Laura agreed with conviction. “Thank goodness,
breakfast is always easy. It’s fruit, and breakfast food and eggs.
Thank goodness too, that fruit grows already made. Just think how much
work it would be if we had to cook oranges and peaches, or if we had
to shell berries. And what a blessing milk is! How nice of the cow to
deliver it all cooked.”

“Well, then,” Rosie began, taking the situation in hand at once, “let’s
start with fruit. Let’s have oranges--”

“Oh let’s!” interrupted Maida excitedly, “I know a perfectly beautiful
way to prepare oranges. You cut the skins into quarters and then into
eighths while they’re still on the orange. You don’t pull them off, but
you turn them back, so that the orange stands in the midst of petals of
its own peel--just like a gold pond-lily.”

“All except Delia’s orange,” Laura put in.

“I notice that Mrs. Dore gives her orange juice. And after she has
squeezed it, she strains it very carefully.”

“All right, Laura,” Rosie agreed again, at once, “you can attend to the
oranges.”

“I think we’d better have prepared breakfast-food this first
breakfast,” Maida suggested. “We are bound to make a lot of mistakes in
cooking; but we can’t hurt anything that just comes out of a box.”

“Yes, you’re right, Maida,” Rosie agreed. “Now, shall we have an
omelette? I know how to cook omelettes. No, I guess we’d better have
boiled eggs. They’re the easiest, and I don’t want to make any mistakes
the first day if possible.”

“Well that settles breakfast,” Maida declared with satisfaction. “Now
what are we going to have for dinner?”

“I’d like to have a fish chowder,” Rosie suggested. “We haven’t had one
this summer. Most everybody likes chowder. And then,” she added with a
smile, “it’s the only thing I know how to cook.”

“Then we’ll have it, Rosie,” Maida decided.

“I’ll teach you to how to make chowder if you like,” Rosie offered.

“Oh will you, Rosie?” Maida asked ecstatically. “I love fish chowder.
I’ve never in all my life had enough. How I would enjoy making it.”

“And then,” Rosie continued, “for dessert, we’ll have a bread pudding.
It’s the only pudding I know how to make.”

Laura drew a long breath, “What’ll we eat next Thursday?” she asked in
a serious tone. “I don’t know how to cook anything but popovers and
custards and cake. Maida doesn’t know how to cook anything at all. And
you are cooking, this first Thursday, everything you know.”

Rosie sighed too. “Well we’ll consider next Thursday when it comes,”
she decided wisely, “and besides Granny and Mrs. Dore or Floribel will
teach us how to cook anything--they said they would. And now we come to
supper.”

However supper was not so easy for Laura as for the other two,
because Rosie immediately decided that Laura should make some of her
one-two-three-four cake. The rest of the meal was to be bread and
butter, some of the preserves left over from the year before, with
which the house was richly provided; and great pitchers of milk.

“We’ve got to do the cooking for this whole day ourselves,” Maida
sighed. “There isn’t a thing in which the boys can help us.”

“No,” Rosie admitted regretfully, “and I wanted to make them work too.
Next week,” she added, “they’ll be busy enough because we’ll have ice
cream and they’ll have to turn the freezer.”

The girls pinned up their schedule of meals on the kitchen wall; set
the alarm clock for an incredibly early hour; went to bed at eight,
instead of nine, very serene in their minds.


The record of their first day was probably as good and as bad as that
of most amateur cooks. In the early morning, the little girls moved so
noiselessly about the big kitchen and talked in such low tones that
Mrs. Dore said she had not heard a sound until the breakfast bell rang.
The first two courses of breakfast went off beautifully. Then they
discovered they had boiled the eggs twelve minutes. Granny declared
that they must eat them because eggs were expensive. Perhaps it was
to take away the sting from this mistake that Mrs. Dore remarked that
she had never seen oranges look so beautiful as these--in their curled
golden calyxes.

When it came to luncheon, there were mistakes again; but not such
serious ones. Rosie’s chowder was hot and perfectly delicious; only
there wasn’t enough of it. Rosie herself nobly went without; but the
children clamored for more. On the other hand, she had made enough
bread pudding for a family twice their size. Here the boys eagerly came
to the rescue and demanded three helpings each.

Supper was very successful. Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore congratulated
Rosie warmly upon it.

“Well I didn’t make any mistakes for this meal,” Rosie said dryly,
“because there wasn’t anything that I cooked.”

However Granny continued to praise the three tired little girls.

“It’s foine little cooks you’ll make,” she prophesied.

In the glow that this praise developed, they washed and wiped the
dishes, chattering like magpies. And then, following the impulse which
emerged from that happy glow, they cleaned up Floribel’s kitchen;
re-arranged and re-decorated it.

They re-arranged and re-decorated to such good purpose that, the next
day, Floribel said privately to Mrs. Dore. “It sho do look beautiful.
Ah’se never seen a kitchen lak it, but Ah can’t find a _single thing_.”




CHAPTER XI

VISITORS


After the second Thursday, which was Floribel’s and Zeke’s day out,
came the second Saturday of the children’s stay in the Little House,
and on that Saturday all the parents came to Satuit from Charlestown
to see how their children were getting on: Mr. and Mrs. Brine, Mr. and
Mrs. Lathrop, Mr. and Mrs. Clark, Mr. and Mrs. Doyle, Mr. and Mrs.
Hale. Arthur had no mother but Mr. Duncan appeared with the rest. Mr.
Westabrook appeared at odd moments and helped entertain the guests.
The children of these parents were so excited that Maida and Dicky
lamented loudly that they had no relatives to show the Little House.
This was before the train which brought all these guests arrived.
Afterwards, they had no time to regret anything. The hospitality of
the Little House was stretched to its furthest expansion. The boys,
bunking in tents, hastily erected on the lawn, gave up their beds to
their fathers. The girls, sleeping on extra cots in the nursery, gave
up their beds to their mothers. This did not take care of the entire
company. All the rooms in the Annex were filled.

It was a two days, equally busy for hosts and guests. The children
were determined to show their parents everything and the parents were
equally determined to see everything. One instant Mr. and Mrs. Doyle
could be seen being dragged off by Molly and Timmie to view House Rock;
the next, Mr. and Mrs. Clark, herded by the twins, were being pulled in
the direction of the Fairy Ring. Laura and Rosie displayed every detail
of house and barn to their parents. Arthur took his father on two long
explorations through the woods. Betsy celebrated the arrival of Mr. and
Mrs. Hale by her first attempt to run house and the Magic Mirror, and
brought back away. She was caught half way between them in triumph, her
big eyes sparkling with the mischief which always filled them when she
was successful in accomplishing her purpose.

Perhaps though, Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore enjoyed more than anybody
this break in their country life; for a happy smile never left Granny’s
wrinkled face, and Mrs. Dore talked to the visitors all day long.

The company left on a late Sunday afternoon train with an invitation
to come every future week-end; and it looked as though life in the
Little House would go on as usual.

However, Monday proved to be an equally exciting day as the two which
had preceded it. For when the children--Big Six and Little Six--came
back from their swim in the afternoon, they saw, lying placidly on the
lawn, the figure of a strange man--asleep or awake they could not at
first make out.

The figure decided that for them by leaping to its feet in what seemed
one athletic jerk.

“It’s Billy Potter!” shrieked Maida.

“Billy!” “Billy!” “Billy!” the others made chorus. And they raced over
to his side; threw themselves in one scrambled heap upon him. Being of
athletic build, Billy Potter sustained that shock splendidly.

Billy Potter was one of the oldest friends the Little Shop had had. He
was a reporter on a Boston paper, a great favorite with Mr. Westabrook,
whom he had many times interviewed; and a devoted friend of Maida’s
whom he called Petronilla. It was the first time the children had seen
him since Maida left for Europe.

He was rather short--Billy Potter--blue-eyed and golden-haired; the
eyes very blue and very observant; his hair closely woven into a thick
curly thatch.

The children alternately hugged and thumped him.

“Why haven’t you been here before, Billy?” Maida said, “I’ve been at
home two weeks now.”

“Only because I wasn’t in Boston,” Billy declared. “I’ve been away on
my vacation. I had to take it early this year. I couldn’t have come
over here at this moment, but that I’m on a story.”

When Billy Potter spoke of a “story,” he meant the account which he
wrote of events for his paper. “I’m on a kidnapping case,” he explained
over their heads to Mr. Westabrook. “I may be here in Satuit on and off
for a few days. And if invited, I might become a guest of this noble
establishment.”

“Oh do come, oh do, oh do!” the children entreated.

“All right,” Billy agreed, “I’m only waiting for an invitation,
Petronilla.”

“Well here it is,” said Maida.

“I accept,” Billy Potter laughed.

The children had to take him the rounds too. He wondered at and
exclaimed over the vegetable garden. He exclaimed over and wondered at
the flower garden. He went in swimming in the Magic Mirror, and showed
them many new water tricks. He inspected House Rock with the Little
Six. He climbed to the Tree Room with the Big Six. He declared that the
Tree Room was where he must sleep. And he did sleep there, although it
took all the ingenuity that he possessed, plus the assistance of the
three boys, to pull a cot up into it.

And while Billy Potter was still a guest, as though, as Maida said,
_wonders would never cease_, Dr. Pierce suddenly appeared on the scene.

Dr. Pierce was the Westabrook family physician. He had known Maida all
her life and called her Pinkwink. He too had often visited the Little
Shop; had been one of its advisors.

The children deserted Billy for a moment and threw themselves pell-mell
on the old physician. He stood braced for the shock which made every
one of the tight gray curls on his head quiver and brought the
twinkliest of twinkles to his happy old eyes.

“Well, _Pinkwink_!” he exclaimed, “is this the little girl who used to
have cheeks as white as paper and eyes like a burnt hole in a blanket?
And are these those pale, washed-out, colorless, slim-jim-looking city
children I used to know?”

He hugged all the girls impartially, shook hands with the boys; then he
too made the rounds of the place.

He played all his old games on them; drawing Betsy out to tell her
exploits; listening with great enjoyment to Molly and Timmie; and never
ceasing to pretend that Dorothy and Mabel were one girl with a magic
power of being in two places at once.

“You must come oftener, Dr. Pierce,” Maida said when at last they found
themselves seated in the living room.

“Oh I’m coming often enough,” Dr. Pierce said. “You’ll get good and
tired of me before I have finished with you. I’m coming at regular
intervals to see that you don’t drown yourselves or get ivy-poison, or
sun-stroke or lockjaw or any of those things that children are so fond
of. I shall make regular inspections. In fact I am going to make one
this visit. Now that I speak of it, this strikes me as a good time.
Line up over there against the wall, all of you, and stick out your
tongues.”

Life fell into regular habits after a while. For work--two hours every
morning, except on Thursdays, took care of that. On Thursdays, however,
it was a matter of several hours. For play--it seemed as though the
rest of the long golden days was all play.

After the household tasks came bathing which had become a habit as
regular as eating. Bathing was almost the best fun they had--especially
for Dicky.

Dicky soon rejected the water wings. He was swimming now--not of course
as fast or as well as the others--but swimming with that fresh joy
which only the amateur knows. The others were perfecting strokes of
various kinds and practising fancy diving of various sorts. Arthur was
of course the best and strongest performer among them. Maida would
never be more than a fair swimmer nor Harold; but Rosie had soon
out-distanced Laura, was beginning to work into Arthur’s class. However
Laura was still, would probably always be, the most graceful of them
all.

The afternoons were spent in walking and playing tennis; the evenings
were given up to reading and games.

It looked at first as if their program would never vary. The beautiful
weather kept up and the beautiful country seemed full of diversion.
Occasionally came a dark day and then the boys devoted themselves to
boxing in the barn; their shouts and laughter would reach even to the
Little House. On those occasions Mrs. Dore and Granny would gather the
girls about them; set the older ones to mending or to teaching Molly
and the Clark twins how to sew.

The Big Six kept running into the Burles although the appearance of any
of the Little House children on the path leading to the gypsy camp was
a signal for Silva and Tyma to disappear instantly into the bushes.
The children frequently came across the young gypsies peddling their
baskets in the village--at the pleasant Wampum Arms which was the
Satuit hotel; or at the quiet farmhouses along the road. In the long
walks that they occasionally took in the woods, Maida and her friends
were likely to happen upon the outlaw pair. If the Burles saw the girls
coming, they quickly looked and walked the other way. The two gypsies
were not however much bothered with attentions from the Little House
children, for since the experience at the Magic Mirror, the latter
never voluntarily glanced in their direction.

Once Rosie came home almost breathless with rage. “What do you think
has just happened, Maida?” she asked indignantly. “I was coming along
the path when I saw a little opening in the bushes. It looked so pretty
that I thought I’d cut into it. Just then I saw Silva Burle running--oh
running like _sixty_--although she had a bottle of milk under her arm.
She heard me coming and suddenly she disappeared through the bushes.
But before she got away she made--oh the horridest face at me. I was so
mad--”

“She certainly is a strange girl,” Maida remarked in a perplexed tone.
“I don’t understand why she acts so. We’ve never done anything to her.
Why should she treat us like this?”

Arthur also reported that once, early in the morning, he caught
sight of Silva Burle flying along the path ahead of him, a bundle
of--he could not tell what--under her arms. At the sound of his
footsteps--Arthur said it was exactly as though she were afraid of
something he might do--though, he added, what she expected him to do,
he couldn’t guess, she flew to cover like a rabbit; actually vanished
from his sight.

But the most disagreeable of all was Laura’s experience. Rosie
pointed out to her the little opening among the trees which had so
interested her. The next day, passing it alone, it occurred to Laura
that she would find out where it led. Like Rosie she walked through
the underbrush--but she got farther than Rosie did. Suddenly she came
against a trailing tree branch; she started to climb over it. One
foot had planted itself. She lifted the other and--splash! A pail of
water, hung on an over-hanging branch, fell on her, drenching her from
head to foot. It spoiled the gloss of her freshly-ironed muslin frock
of course, but it spoiled her temper more. Maida pondered all this
evidence, utterly perplexed. Why the Burles should have taken such a
dislike to them all she could not guess. She did not speak of it to
her father because she was afraid he might complain to Aunt Save. And
Maida did not want to make trouble for her friend. But under promise
of secrecy, she discussed the situation with Billy Potter. For once,
that astute young gentleman had no explanation of a curious social
phenomenon.

Billy Potter was coming to see them regularly now; so was Mr.
Westabrook. They both had long talks with the children, collectively
and separately.

One afternoon as they were sitting in the living room a curious
revelation occurred. Arthur was talking about the forest. It was plain
to be seen that it fascinated him beyond measure. Often he would wake
early in the morning; slip down to the Magic Mirror; canoe himself
across its dawn-swept, glossy surface to the other side; wander for an
hour or more in the woods.

“I guess I’ll have to make a forester out of you,” Mr. Westabrook said
that afternoon. “I hope you don’t stay up late at night.” His remark
was not a question, only a comment.

Arthur flushed, remained silent. Mr. Westabrook continued to look at
him. And now his look was a question.

“Twice--” Arthur faltered finally--“when the moon was full. I wanted to
see if I could come up to some of your deer.”

“Well, did you manage?” Mr. Westabrook asked.

“Only once,” Arthur answered. “If they get the smell of you--good
night! But I read in a book here in the library how to work around so’s
the wind wouldn’t carry it--and one night, I watched a group feeding
and tossing their horns nearly five minutes.”

“It’s a pretty sight,” Mr. Westabrook remarked. “I guess if I were a
boy I couldn’t resist that myself. But I want you to promise me that
you’ll make these explorations only the three nights that the moon is
full.”

Arthur promised readily.

“Oh father,” Maida begged, “couldn’t I do it too?”

Her father shook his head. “No I guess you little girls must stay in
your beds. Yes you too Dicky,” as Dicky’s lips opened automatically,
“and you Harold. Sometime perhaps but not now. Arthur is older and
bigger. He can take care of himself. Now,” he concluded quickly as if
determined to give envy no time to develop, “come out into the barn. I
hear there’s some good boxing going on here. Besides I want you to show
me how your tennis is improving.”


The Little Six continued to play near or in the house directly under
Granny Flynn’s or Mrs. Dore’s watchful eye. Occasionally they were
permitted to wade in the lake, but only when one of the grown-ups
accompanied them. For the most of their time, they were contented to
frequent Home Rock.

Maida had told the Little Six that there were toys awaiting them in
the Little House. These included dolls of all sizes; doll furniture;
little sets of dishes, china and pewter. Granny eked these out with the
store of saucerless cups and cupless saucers, the cracked bowls and
plates which linger on the outskirts of all respectable china closets.
The children were permitted to carry pails of water over to House Rock
and there, in its shade, miniature housekeeping began.

From every level, glassy-eyed dolls, sitting placidly in little chairs,
or lying placidly in little beds, surveyed the landscape. Every morning
the small mothers burst into an orgy of house-cleaning, sweeping rock
rooms, dusting doll furniture, washing doll dishes. Every afternoon,
there broke out a fury of baking. Hundreds of delicious mud pies were
mixed, baked and then abandoned to that limbo, to which all mud pies
are sooner or later consigned. When this play gave out, the ingenious
Mrs. Dore set them to cutting out paper dolls; and to making, in
scrap-books hastily improvised from brown paper, innumerable rooms,
furnished with advertisement furniture, cut from magazines. This
involved endless hours of cutting in which scissors disappeared as
though by witchcraft and reappeared as though by magic; endless hours
of pasting from which the small interior decorators returned splashed
with flour paste from head to foot.

When in turn this game lost its savor, the resourceful Mrs. Dore
designed paper houses, these architectural wonders, made from the
endless piles of rejected paper boxes which the under-the-eaves closets
of the Little House contained. The Little Six were as much delighted
with the Little House and its neighborhood as the Big Six. But unlike
the Big Six--with the exception of Betsy--they were content with
near-by joys. But Betsy had never recovered from her tendency to run
away.

Once or twice she slipped off the House Rock and started to make
through the green forests in any direction that occurred to her. But
she was always caught. Caught--because after her first straying, Mrs.
Dore put on the efficient little Molly the burden of keeping a watch
upon her. And Molly watched Betsy--watched her with the same quiet,
supervising care which she had always brought to her guardianship of
the self-willed, stubborn Timmie. After a while, astute Betsy came to
realize that a guard was always near and, for the time being ceased to
stray.

“She’ll do it sometime,” Dicky prophesied again and again. “She always
has and she always will.”

The children recovered from their first attack of sunburn; but they
succumbed to another and another. The second attack was not so painful
and the third was scarcely noticed. The red in their faces deepened to
a brown which was like the protection of armor against the sun. The
blue-eyed and fair-haired ones--Maida and the two Lathrops--freckled;
but Rosie turned a deeper rose-bronze every day; Dicky was fast
changing to the color of a coffee bean and Arthur threatened to become
pitch-black. As for the Little Six, Maida said they were “just colonies
of freckles”; and colonies in which layer had grown on layer.

“I can’t believe you are the same children I saw in the city a little
over two weeks ago,” Buffalo Westabrook remarked on his second visit.
“First I was afraid you were working too hard. When Maida sent me
the program of your work, it looked to me as if you were undertaking
altogether too much, but you certainly thrive on it.”

“Well we play more than we work,” Rosie explained.

“I never was so hungry in all my life,” Laura declared, “and I fall
asleep the moment my head touches the pillow.”

“All right,” Buffalo Westabrook laughed. “You’re doing so well I’ll
leave it all in your hands.”

He always surveyed both the flower garden and the vegetable garden when
he came--surveyed them with much interest. He always went into the barn
and made an examination of the boys’ quarters.

And so with work and play, July wore itself away.




CHAPTER XII

BETSY’S FIND


The Big Six--as the older children were now called--were returning
from their swim. A shower, early in the morning, had delayed the
bathing hour until afternoon. And their pent-up spirits had exploded in
prolonged skylarking in the water. It was late afternoon when they came
in sight of the Little House. They threw themselves under one of the
twin elms on the front lawn, a little warm from their walk home. And
as the Big Six languidly talked, the Little Six came, in single file,
along the trail which led from House Rock.

“Where’s Betsy?” the sharp-eyed Rosie called.

“I sent her back for her dolly,” Molly explained gravely. “She forgot
and left Hildegarde on House Rock. Hildegarde was all dressed up in her
best clothes and I didn’t fink she ought to stay out all night long.”

“That’s right, Molly,” Maida applauded the little girl. “Take just as
good care of your dollies as you do of yourselves. And then when you
grow up, they’ll still be with you--like Lucy.”

Molly, heading the file turned suddenly and walked soberly over to
Maida’s side. She knelt down on the grass beside her. “Maida,” she
said, “when we first came down here, you said if we were very _very_
good, we could play with Lucy some rainy day.”

Maida laughed up into the earnest little face. The key-note of Molly’s
coloring was brown just as Delia’s was red, Betsy’s black, and the
Clark twins pink-and-white. Molly’s serious little face, from which
hung two tight thick little braids, had, even in her wee childhood, a
touch of motherliness; and indeed she brooded like a warm little mother
bird over the entire rest of the group.

“So I did,” Maida said.

“But we’ve only had free rainy days,” Molly complained.

The Big Six laughed. Molly could not pronounce t and her failure in
this respect always entertained the Big Six. They all reached out and
knocked the elm trunk. “Knock wood!” they called to Molly; and Molly,
not at all understanding what it was all about, obediently tapped the
tree with her dimpled knuckles.

“And you didn’t let us have Lucy those free days,” Molly stated
reproachfully.

“But if you wait long enough, Molly,” Maida excused herself, “you are
sure to have a big three-days’ storm. And I promise you you shall have
Lucy all three days.”

“And the little hair frunk?” Molly questioned eagerly.

“Yes,” Maida agreed, “the little hair frunk.”

“Cross you froat!” Molly demanded.

“Yes, cross my froat,” Maida agreed and crossed it.

“Oh goody!” Molly skipped away on the wings of ecstasy.

“Did Betsy come back?” Dicky asked carelessly.

“I didn’t notice,” Maida answered absently, “I wasn’t looking.”

But after a while the supper bell rang. The children filed into the
dining room and took their places. One chair was vacant.

“Where’s Betsy?” Mrs. Dore immediately asked.

Everybody looked puzzled and nobody answered.

“I told her to go and get her dolly,” Molly asserted.

Nobody paid any attention to her.

“She’s probably up-stairs in the nursery,” Mrs. Dore decided. “Once or
twice she’s fallen asleep up there--she’s got so tired playing.”

She left the room and the children heard her running over the stairs.
In a moment or two, they heard her footsteps coming back--at a swifter
pace.

“She isn’t there,” Mrs. Dore said in a quiet voice. “Nor in any one of
the upstairs rooms. Now before you eat, children, scatter about the
place and see if you can find her.”

“She’s run away,” Dicky asserted. “I told you she would.”

“I told her to go back for her dolly,” Molly reiterated gravely.

As Mrs. Dore had ordered, the children scattered. They searched the
house, the Annex, the barn, the Tree House, the two gardens, and the
adjacent trails. No Betsy! By this time, Floribel and Zeke, looking
very serious, had joined in the search. Granny Flynn, obviously
frightened, was wringing her hands. Mrs. Dore’s face had turned
serious too, but she was quite mistress of herself.

“We’ll wait a few minutes,” she ordered slowly, “and then if we haven’t
found her, we’ll telephone the Big House. In the meantime, Granny,
you see that the children have their supper. The rest of you,” she
addressed the Big Six, “must go without your supper for a while. I want
you to help.”

The Big Six wanted to help of course. For a moment or two they wandered
about aimlessly--a haphazard group; with Mrs. Dore and Floribel and
Zeke trying to direct all at once. Suddenly Arthur Duncan took command
of the situation. He ran into the house and emerged with his arms full
of things; the cow-bell with which Floribel called the children to
meals and four electric flash-lights. “Laura,” he commanded, handing
her the cow-bell, “I want you to stand here at the door and ring this
bell at regular intervals. I’m going to divide the rest of you into
pairs and send you off in different directions. We’re losing time,
all bunched together like this. Now Mrs. Dore, if you and Dicky will
go to the Magic Mirror and hunt the woods there--and Floribel, you
and Rosie take the House Rock direction. Zeke, you and Harold search
in front, across the road. Maida and I’ll beat the woods back of the
house. Remember, don’t any one of you go out of hearing of the bell.
And if any of you find Betsy, come back and ring the bell hard--without
stopping.”

The four pairs scattered, north, south, east and west. For a few
moments Maida could hear the others crashing through the woods. She
caught their voices ... getting farther and farther away ... calling
“Betsy!” ... “Betsy!” ... fragments of sentences. Finally as she
and Arthur plunged deeper and deeper into the forest, she got only
broken blurred calls. At length these too died away. The silence of
the immeasurable, immemorial forest closed about her and Arthur. The
oncoming dusk seemed to be pouring like a great, gradual-growing flood
upon them.

“There isn’t any chance of our losing Betsy forever, Arthur?” Maida
asked once in a hushed voice.

“Not a chance,” Arthur answered. “If we don’t find her, your father
will. In five minutes he can get enough men together to beat these
woods. And by midnight they can cover every spot of them.”

“They are awfully big woods, Arthur,” Maida commented a little
fearfully.

“But a gang of men working systematically,” Arthur explained, “could
get through them in no time. Why the year my father and I camped out
in Maine, there was a child lost in a forest a hundred times as big as
this, but the whole village turned out and they found her in an hour.”
Arthur did not add that the child was only three. He went on. “You see,
little children can’t walk very fast. They are likely to go round in
circles any way. And they soon get tired out. We shall probably find
her asleep.”

“But if she’s fast asleep,” Maida remarked, “she can’t help us by
answering our calls.”

To this Arthur answered, “Perhaps our calls will wake her.”

In the meantime, they searched every bit of ground thoroughly. At the
foot of tree trunks, beside rocks, under bushes, Arthur thrust the rays
of his electric flash-light. At intervals, he called to Maida and at
intervals Maida called to him. It grew darker and darker.

“There, there’s the moon!” Arthur said in a relieved tone. “It’s going
to help a good deal--having a full moon.” Following his pointing
finger, Maida caught a faint, red glow through the trees. They searched
a little longer.

“Arthur, I can barely hear the bell,” Maida exclaimed suddenly.

Arthur sighed. “I was just thinking of that,” he said. “I guess we’ll
have to go back to the Little House and telephone the Big House.”

They turned and walked in the direction of the cow-bell. They were too
preoccupied with the sense of their unhappiness to talk. Once only
Maida said, “She’s one of the darlingest little girls I ever knew. If
anything happened to Betsy--And then how could we tell her mother?”

When they came out on the lawn of the Little House, they found Floribel
and Rosie sitting there. A minute later, Zeke and Harold appeared from
one direction and, after an interval, Mrs. Dore and Dicky from another.
They all had the same anxious, slightly-terrified look.

“I’ll call up the Big House now,” Mrs. Dore said quietly. “We can’t
handle this alone any longer.” She started towards the door and
automatically the others followed her in a silent, down-cast file.

And then suddenly, Rosie screamed, “There’s Betsy now!”

The whole group turned; stood petrified.

Maida followed Rosie’s scream with “And what is she carrying in her
arms?”

And then the whole group broke and ran in the direction of House Rock.

Betsy was coming down the trail toward the Little House. The moon was
fairly high now and it shown full on the erect little figure and the
excited sparkling little face. Her dress was soiled and torn. Her
hair ribbon had gone and her curls hung helter-skelter about her rosy
cheeks. Her great eyes shone like baby moons as her gaze fell on the
group running towards her. A trusting smile parted her red lips; showed
all her little white mice teeth.

“She’s carrying a fawn!” Arthur exclaimed as he neared her. “Why, it
can’t be a day old!”

Betsy _was_ carrying a fawn. As they surrounded her, she handed it
trustfully over into Arthur’s extended hands. “I finded it myself,” she
announced proudly. “I ranned and I ranned and I ranned. And it runned
and it runned and it runned. But I ranned faster than it runned and
pretty soon it was all tired out and I catched it.”

This was all of her adventure that they ever got out of Betsy.
Conjecture later filled in these meager outlines; that Betsy had
been coming home with her doll, Hildegarde, when this stray from the
Westabrook preserves crossed her path. Dropping Hildegarde--they found
her a few moments later, not far from House Rock--she chased the poor
little creature over trails, through bushes, across rocks until she ran
him down. Then picking him up in her arms, she found the path by some
lucky accident and came home.

“Mother of God!” Mrs. Dore said, hugging Betsy again and again, “the
child looked like the young St. John coming down the path.”

Floribel lifted Betsy in her arms and carried her the rest of the way,
a very excited little girl proudly telling her story again and again.

“I ranned and I ranned and I ranned,” she kept repeating, “and he
runned and he runned and he runned--”

The other children tried to help in the process by holding onto
dangling legs and arms, by patting the little thickly-curly head and
by reaching up to kiss the round rosy cheeks. All except Arthur, who
carried the exhausted little fawn.

Once home, Betsy was the center of attention for only a moment. She was
given her supper; a warm soothing bath and put immediately to bed. Then
the fawn took the center of the stage.

The capable Arthur found a big basket which he filled with soft cloths;
placed the exhausted little creature in it. He _was_ exhausted; for
when Arthur first put him on the floor, his legs gave out under him. He
spraddled, all four legs flat, on the rug in front of the fireplace--as
Rosie said, “exactly like a wet mosquito.” Then Arthur heated some
milk; dipped a corner of a handkerchief into it; gave it to the fawn to
suck. It was a slow process; for the fawn did not seem to understand
this strange method of being fed. At length, Arthur thought of a better
scheme. Procuring an eye-dropper from the medicine-chest, he poured the
warm fluid, drop by drop, into the little creature’s mouth.

All the time the children knelt around the basket in a circle.

“How sweet it is,” Rosie who adored animals, kept saying. “Look at its
big eyes and its beautiful head!”

“I’d love to take it in my arms,” Maida exclaimed, again and again,
“only I know I would frighten it to death. See how it trembles if we
get too near!”

The little children, who had been allowed one glimpse of the deer,
went up-stairs chattering like little magpies. Betsy, tired with her
long hunting, had fallen asleep the instant she struck the pillow. But
the rest were in such a high state of excitement that it was almost an
hour before the last of them calmed down. It was not easy that night to
drive the Big Six to bed.

When the denizens of the Little House waked the next morning, their
tiny forest guest was lying in his basket, bright-eyed as usual. For
an hour after his breakfast and theirs, they hovered about him making
all kinds of plans in regard to his future. But these dreams were
rudely shattered when Mrs. Dore informed them that she had told Mr.
Westabrook, over the telephone, the whole episode and that he was
sending a man that day to bring the deer back to the Big House.

“Oh I don’t see why we have to give him up!” Maida declared in
heart-broken accents. “What fun it would be to have a deer all our own
and watch him grow. Just think when his horns came!”

“Oh, Maida!” Rosie begged, “do call your father up and tease him to let
us keep him. Just think of having a baby fawn running about the house.”

Both the Sixes, Little and Big, added their entreaties to Rosie’s.

“I don’t think it would be any use, Maida,” Mrs. Dore quietly
interrupted. “Your father said if by chance any stranger brought a
dog here, he would kill the little fawn the moment he caught him. And
then when the fawn himself grew bigger, and developed horns, he might
even be dangerous. Besides Betsy,” as Betsy burst into loud wails
of, “I finded him myself. I ranned and I ranned and I ranned--” “Mr.
Westabrook said he would send you something nice to take the fawn’s
place.”

“But the fawn’s alive,” Rosie expostulated in a grieved tone. “And
nothing can be as nice as a live creature.”

“He said this would be alive too,” Mrs. Dore comforted her.

“Oh _what_?” Rosie asked.

Mrs. Dore’s eyes danced. “It’s a surprise. I’m not to tell it.”

Only half appeased, the children hung around the house, waiting to see
what the _live_ thing was. In the middle of the morning, a run-about
drew up in front of the Little House and one of Mr. Westabrook’s men
alighted from it. He was wearing a long loose coat, but he had nothing
in his arms. He took the little fawn, basket and all, and placed it in
the run-about. The children tagged his every movement, followed with
their eyes his every motion. After the fawn was safely installed on the
seat beside him, he turned on the engine.

Betsy burst into tears.

“Oh that’s the little girl,” the man exclaimed, as though suddenly
remembering something, “who found the fawn, isn’t it?”

Through her sobs Betsy began, “I ranned and I ranned and I--”

“Well then,” the man said, “I guess I’ve got something for you.” He
reached into one of the pockets of his big coat and brought out a tiny,
nondescript bundle of loose white fur; of helpless waving black paws;
big bulging winking black eyes; a curly queue of tail; an impertinent
sniffing nose--a baby bull dog. He handed it to Betsy. Betsy’s tears
dried in a flash. She hugged the puppy close to her warm neck; ran with
him to the house. The children raced after her, and the run-about,
utterly forgotten, disappeared down the road.

“Let’s call it Fawn,” Rosie said, and Fawn it was.

Fawn adopted the Little House as her home at once. She was a very
affectionate person and she soon grew to love devotedly every member of
the household. They all loved her devotedly in return; but none loved
her more than Betsy; and Betsy’s dog she always remained.




CHAPTER XIII

DISCOVERY


“Do you know I think it would be fine if we went off some day this week
on a picnic,” Laura said unexpectedly one morning. “I just love to go
on picnics. And we haven’t had one yet.”

“Oh Laura!” Maida agreed ecstatically, “What a wonderful idea! I love
picnics too! I adore picnic food and I never yet have had all the
hard-boiled eggs I want. How did you come to think of it?”

“I thought of it last night just before I fell asleep.” Laura’s voice
sparkled with pride. “It was all I could do to keep from going in
your rooms and waking you and Rosie up to tell you about it. I was so
excited that I couldn’t fall asleep and so I made a perfectly beautiful
plan. I thought we might put up lunches; then get into our bathing
suits; paddle across the Magic Mirror to the other side and spend the
day there--we have never really explored the other side. I’m sure it’s
perfectly lovely there and we’ll have a wonderful time.”

“Let’s do it to-morrow,” Rosie took up with Laura’s plan immediately.
“We can get up early; cook the eggs and make the sandwiches. There’ll
be enough cake left over. And don’t let’s--oh listen, everybody!
Remember not to forget the salt. People always forget the salt on
picnics.”

“It’s ice cream day to-morrow,” Harold said sadly. “We’ll miss it if we
are not home to freeze it.”

“No, if you boys will get up early and make it, we can take it along in
the freezer with us,” Rosie suggested daringly.

“Sure!” Arthur was highly enthusiastic. “I don’t care how early I have
to get up to make ice cream. I’d rather do that than go without it.”

All other conversation was banished for the day. They kept thinking of
things they would like to take with them--and stopped only short of the
bicycles.

“I should think,” Maida said once, “that we were going to Africa for
six months at least. Remember one thing though--_don’t forget the
salt_!”

They were so afraid that they wouldn’t wake in time that they wound
their alarm clocks to the very last notch. They did wake in time
however. In fact they had to put the alarm clocks under the bed clothes
and pile pillows on top of them to keep from waking the rest of the
household. With much whispering and many half-suppressed giggles the
girls managed to get into bathing suits; went down stairs and began
their work in the kitchen. Although the exact number of eggs and
sandwiches had been decided on the day before, they held many low-toned
colloquies on the subject.

“Remember,” Laura said, “you can always eat twice as much at a picnic
as anywhere else. I don’t know why it is,” she concluded thoughtfully,
“but even things you don’t like taste good. _Be sure not to forget the
salt!_”

By the time Floribel appeared to get their breakfasts, they were nearly
famished but nevertheless they ate hurriedly, so great was their
longing to get off. Arthur shouldered the ice cream freezer. Between
them, the girls carried the luncheon. The little children had to be
led to the side of the house, so as not to witness their elaborate
burden-laden departure. As it was acute little Betsy apparently guessed
that something was going on which did not include her. As the Big Six
disappeared down the trail they could hear Granny Flynn soothing her
whimperings.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was not yet high enough in the heavens
for it to be hot. Indeed dew still lay over everything. But there was a
languor in the atmosphere which warned them that it would be hot enough
later. The pond was indeed a Magic Mirror. It was like glass. Not a
ripple roughed its surface and everything on the shore was so perfectly
reflected that it looked painted on the water. The children wasted no
time on the view. They pulled the four canoes out of the boat house
and began loading them. Arthur paddled alone in one with the ice cream
freezer and the lunch. Harold paddled alone in the second with the rugs
and the hammock; the others went, two to a canoe. The little fleet kept
close.

“Isn’t it a beautiful place?” Rosie asked joyously, trailing her hand
in the water, “It’s like fairy land to-day. How I wish I could see some
fairies or goblins or something strange!”

“I’d be content to see some white peacocks,” Dicky said soberly.

“Oh Dicky!” Maida exclaimed, “I’ve never taken you to see the white
peacocks as I promised. I’ll do that just as soon as I can.”

“I’d rather see some deer.” Harold remarked.

“Well all I ask,” Laura was very emphatic, “is not to see two
people--Silva and Tyma Burle.”

“I don’t think we’ll run into them,” Maida declared thoughtfully, “It’s
a long time since any of us have seen them--over two weeks I should
say. Perhaps they’ve gone away.”

“No,” Arthur called from his canoe, “I saw them in the village
yesterday.”

The landing was effected with no difficulty, although here of course
there was no pier. They followed the trail through the woods for a long
way, trying to find a place to camp. One spot attracted some; a second
attracted others; but for a long time, no place attracted them all.

“There are too many stones here,” Rosie would say, “it won’t be
comfortable to sit down.”

“And it’s too sunny here,” Maida commented. “It’ll melt the ice cream
and the butter--and everything.”

“That place slants,” Laura made the third objection, “we want a nice
flat spot.”

“I think I hear water,” Dicky cried suddenly.

“Water!” Maida repeated, “Water! How can you hear it? There’s no water
here. I never saw any brook around here. I can’t hear any water.”

Neither could anybody else; yet Dicky persisted that he heard the sound
of running water.

“You wait here,” he exclaimed suddenly, “let me see if I can find it.”
He disappeared through the trees. He came running back in a few minutes
obviously excited. “I haven’t found it yet,” he explained, “but I
certainly hear it plainer and plainer the farther I go.”

The others swarmed into the bushes. Dicky led the way like a little
human divining rod.

“I hear water,” Rosie announced electrically. “Hark!”

They all stopped and listened. One by one they got the soft tinkle.
Encouraged they kept on, rounding bushes and leaping rocks. The noise
grew louder and louder. A rough trail suddenly appeared. They raced
over it as fast as their burdens would permit. The sound was now a
lovely musical splash. They came out on an open space, surrounded by
pines and thickly carpeted with pine needles. At one side a great rock
thrust out of the earth. Close beside it ran a tiny brook and just
beyond the lee of the rock, the brook fell into a waterfall not more
than a foot high. The children went wild with delight.

“Do you mean to tell me, Maida Westabrook, that you never knew this was
here?” Rosie demanded.

“I never did,” Maida declared solemnly. “I have never seen it. I have
never heard anybody mention it. Isn’t it a darling? What shall we call
it? We must give it a name.”

Nobody had any names ready and everybody was too excited to think. In
fact, at once they began wading up and down the little brook. They
explored the neighborhood. Not far off they came upon a curious patch
of country. A cleared circle, surrounded by pine trees and carpeted
with pines, was filled with irregular lines of great rocks that lost
themselves in the bushes on either side.

“I believe this is a moraine,” Maida exclaimed suddenly. “I’ve seen
moraines in Europe.”

“What’s a moraine?” the others asked.

Maida explained how once the earth had been covered with great
icecaps called glaciers and how in melting these glaciers had often
left--streaking the earth’s surface--great files and lines of rock.
“We’ll ask father to come here some day,” she ended. “He’ll know all
about it. Billy Potter too--he knows everything.”

After a while, they came back to the waterfall. They swept aside the
pine needles; spread the tablecloth on the ground; took food from the
baskets; set it about in an inviting pile. The ice cream had not melted
an atom in the freezer. The sandwiches, done up in wet napkins, were
quite fresh. The eggs looked as inviting as hard-boiled eggs are bound
to look. Everything was all right except that--and this produced first
consternation, then laughter--there was no salt.

“We all reminded everybody else to remember the salt,” Maida said in
disgust, “and so nobody put it in the basket.”

Everybody but Rosie was busy. And Rosie, as though bewitched, was
wandering about, gazing up this vista and down that one; examining
clumps of bushes.

“Come, Rosie, lunch is most ready,” Maida called to her. And as Rosie
didn’t answer, “_What_ are you doing?”

“I’m looking for--” Rosie’s voice was muffled. “I thought I saw
something--Oh come and see what I’ve found!” Now her voice was sharp
and high with excitement.

The children rushed pell-mell in the direction of the voice. Rosie had
gone farther than they thought. Indeed she had disappeared entirely.
She had to keep calling to guide them. When they came to her at last,
she was standing with her back against a tree, the look on her face
very mystified, holding in her arms--

“A doll!” Maida exclaimed. “Who _could_ have dropped it? Nobody ever
comes here but us.”

It was a cheap little doll of the rag-baby order perfectly new,
perfectly clean and dry.

“How did you come to find it?” Laura enquired.

“Well it’s the strangest thing,” Rosie answered in a queer quiet
voice. “I was just poking around here, not thinking of anything
particularly.... And then I thought I saw something moving--a white
figure. I started towards it and then.... And then it seemed to me that
something was thrown through the air. Now when I try to remember, I
can’t be sure I really did see anything thrown through the air and yet
I sort of _feel_ that I did. Anyway I ran to see what it was. When I
got there, this doll was lying in the path.”

“How curious!” Maida commented. “You must have imagined the figure,
Rosie. See, there’s nobody here.”

A little awed, the children stared through the trees, this way and
that. But they stood stock still.

“Yes, I must have imagined it,” Rosie admitted. “Still when I try to
make myself believe I didn’t see anything, something inside tells me I
did.”

“Let’s look about,” Arthur suggested. They scattered exploring; diving
into bush clumps, and peering behind rocks. Fifteen minutes went by.

“Well we’ve found nothing.” Arthur ended the search as he had begun it.
“Let’s go back and eat lunch.”

“Oh let’s!” begged Harold. “I never was so hungry in all my life.”

“Nor I!” “Nor I!” came from the others. Maida alone remained
thoughtful. She led the file, however, back to the waterfall. And it
was she who suddenly stopped and called, “Look! Look what’s happened--”
She stopped as though her breath had given out.




CHAPTER XIV

THE TERROR


In the midst of the clearing, the paper tablecloth still lay on the
ground, a great shining rectangle of white. Scattered about, crumpled,
soiled, or torn were the paper napkins. Everything else, even the ice
cream from the freezer, had disappeared.

“Why, who took it?” Arthur demanded in a dazed voice. “Who _could_ have
taken it?” he went on in a puzzled one. “Is any one of you playing a
joke?” he asked suddenly of the others.

Everybody protested his innocence.

“We haven’t been gone more than fifteen minutes,” Arthur went on.
“Let’s look about. It doesn’t seem to me anybody could have carried all
that stuff far and we not get a glimpse of it. It might be tramps.”

“One thing is certain,” Maida protested, “tramps didn’t do it. There
are never any tramps in Satuit.”

The children started their search. They looked behind trees and under
bushes; but they showed a tendency to keep together. They talked the
matter over, but instinctively their voices lowered. They kept glancing
over their shoulders. They found nothing.

“It’s like Magic,” Maida commented in a still voice. “You were saying,
Rosie, that you wished you could see some fairies or goblins. It looks
to me as though the goblins had stolen our lunch.”

Arthur alone did not leave the clearing. He stood in the center
pivoting about, watching every vista and gnawing his under lip. His
face was more perplexed that any of them had ever seen it.

“Well if we don’t find our lunch pretty soon,” he said after a while,
“we’ve got to go back home to get something to eat.”

“Perhaps somebody’s playing a joke on us,” Rosie suggested, “and if we
wait for a while, they’ll bring the lunch back.”

There seemed nothing else to do. So, rather sobered by this mysterious
event, the children seated themselves in a group by the brook.

“I can’t wait very much longer,” Laura admitted dolefully. “I’m nearly
starved. I was so excited about the picnic that I hardly ate any
breakfast.”

“Just a few minutes more,” Arthur begged. “Maida, please tell us a
story.”

“Once upon a time,” Maida began obligingly, “six boys and girls were
cast away on a great forest with nothing to eat. It was a forest filled
with gob--Hark!” she interrupted herself, “What’s that?”

From somewhere--not the forest about them, nor the sky above: it seemed
actually to issue from the earth under them--came a strange moaning
cry. The children jumped to their feet. The boys started apart. The
girls clung together. The cry grew louder and louder. It was joined by
a second voice even more strange; and then a third entered the chorus.

It was too much.

The little group, white-faced and trembling, broke and made for the
trail. The girls started first. The boys staid still, irresolute;
but as the uncanny sound grew louder and louder, soared higher and
higher, they became panic-stricken too. They ran. Arthur, ending the
file, walked at first. But finally even his walk grew into a run. The
others leaped forward. They bounded over the trail, gaining in terror
as they went. In some way, they got into the canoes but half a dozen
times their trembling and fumbling nearly spilled them out. It was not
until they were well out into the middle of the Magic Mirror that their
composure came back.

“What do you suppose it was?” Maida asked, white faced.

“It couldn’t have been a ghost could it?” dropped from Laura’s shaking
lips.

“No.” Arthur dismissed this theory with complete contempt.

“I should think it was a crazy person,” Harold declared. “Is there a
lunatic asylum around here, Maida?”

“No,” Maida replied.

“Is there any crazy person about here?”

Maida shook her head.

“I think it was a tramp who first stole our lunch,” Arthur guessed
shrewdly, “and then decided to frighten us away.”

“I think the wood is haunted.” Rosie shivered.

“Nonsense!” Maida exclaimed.

“Well I wish I hadn’t run away,” Arthur burst out impatiently. “I wish
I’d stayed.”

“So do I, Arthur,” Maida agreed vigorously. “That’s the first time I
ever ran away from anything in my life.”

“Let’s go back,” Arthur suggested.

Laura burst into tears. “Oh, please don’t,” she begged. “I’m frightened
to death.”

“We won’t go, Laura dear,” Maida reassured her, “don’t worry.” She
continued after an interval of thought, “And don’t let’s tell Granny
Flynn and Mrs. Dore about that screaming. Let’s say that our lunch was
stolen while we were away. If I tell them all of it, they won’t let us
go on another picnic.”

“Well, believe me, I don’t want to go on another picnic,” Laura said,
her eyes streaming still.

However, by the time they had reached the jetty and had tethered the
canoes, they were more composed. When they reached the Little House
even Laura had begun to smile, to admit that the tramp theory was
probably the correct one.

Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore looked very much concerned when they heard
the story. They asked many questions. Finally they decided with Arthur
that tramps were the answer to the strange happening. Maida persisted
though that tramps were never permitted in Satuit.

The next morning Arthur strolled down to the lake alone. In a little
while, he came running back white with rage. “What do you suppose has
happened?” he called while still running up the trail. “We didn’t lock
the canoes in the boathouse last night and somebody has made a great
hole in all four of them.”

The Big Six rushed down to the Magic Mirror. It was only too true.
Four of their canoes were ruined. The children stood staring at them,
horrified.

“I don’t think tramps would do this,” Arthur said slowly. “They’d steal
them, but there’d be no sense in destroying them.”

“No,” Maida said slowly. “This looks as though we had an enemy who is
determined to make us as unhappy as possible.”




CHAPTER XV

ARTHUR’S ADVENTURE


It was after eleven, a cloudless night and a beautiful one. A great
white moon filled the sky with white light and covered the earth with
a thin film of silver. The barn door opened slowly and noiselessly.
Arthur emerged. Padding the grass as quickly as possible, he moved in
the direction of the trail; turned into it. For a while he proceeded
swiftly. But once out of hearing of the Little House he moved more
slowly and without any efforts to deaden his footsteps. That his
excursion had a purpose was apparent from the way that, without pause
or stay of any kind, he made steadily forward. It was obvious that the
Magic Mirror was his objective.

He dipped into the Bosky Dingle and there, perhaps because the air was
so densely laden with flower perfumes, he stopped. Only for an instant
however. After sniffing the air like some wild creature he went on.
Presently he came out on the shore of the lake. Taking a key from his
pocket, he opened the little boathouse in which, since the accident,
the canoes were nightly locked; pulled one of them out; shoved it into
the water. He seated himself in it and started to paddle across the
pond.

Curiously enough, however, he did not strike straight across the Magic
Mirror. He kept close to the edge as though afraid of observation;
slipped whenever he could under overhanging boughs; took advantage
of every bit of low-drooping bush. So stealthy and so silent was his
progress indeed that from the middle of the lake he might not have
been observed at all. This was however a slow method. It was nearly
midnight when he reached the point about opposite the boathouse, which
was apparently his objective. He stopped short of it, however; tied
the canoe to a tree trunk, just where a half-broken bough concealed
it completely; stepped lightly ashore. Apparently he had landed here
before. There developed, under the moonlight, a little side trail which
led in the direction of the main trail. He took it.

Now his movements were attended by much greater caution. He went
slowly and he put his feet down with the utmost care even in the
cleared portions of the trail. Wherever underbrush intervened, he took
great care to skirt it or, with a long quiet leap or a prolonged
straddle, to surmount it so that no sound came from the process. It
was surprising, in a boy so lumbering and with feet and hands so
large, with what delicacy he picked his way. Indeed, he moved with
extraordinary speed and a surprising quiet.

A little distance up the trail, he turned again. This time, he took a
path so little worn that nothing but a full moon would have revealed
its existence. Arthur struck into it with the air of one who has been
there before; followed it with a perfect confidence. At times, it
ceased to be a path at all; merged with underbrush and low trees. But
he must, on an earlier excursion, have blazed a pioneer way through
those obstacles because each time he made without hesitation for the
only spot which offered egress; emerged on the other side with the
same quiet and dispatch. He went on and on, proceeding with a greatly
increased swiftness but with no diminution of his caution.

After a while, he came into ordered country. Obviously he had struck
the cleared land that, for so many acres, surrounded the Big House. Now
he moved like a shadow but at a smart clip. He had the confident air
of one familiar with the lay of the land. After a while, he struck a
wide avenue of trees--Mr. Westabrook had taught him its French name,
an _allee_. This was one of five, all beginning at the Big House and
ending with a fountain or a statue. Arthur proceeded under the shade of
the trees until he came out near the Big House. Then he swung himself
up among the branches of a tree; found a comfortable crotch; seated
himself, his back against the trunk. With a forked stick he parted the
branches; watched.

The moon was riding high now and, as the night was still cloudless, it
was pouring white fire over the earth. The great lawn in front of the
Big House looked like silvered velvet. Half way down its length, like
a jet of shredded crystal, the fountain still played into its white
marble basin. Out of reach of its splashing flood, as though moored
against its marble sides, four swans, great feathery heaps of snow,
slept with their heads under their wings. As Arthur stared a faint
perturbation stirred the air, as though somewhere at the side of the
house--unseen by him--a motor pulsed to rest. Presently a high, slim
dog--Arthur recognized it to be a Russian boar-hound; white, pointed
nose, long tail--came sauntering across the lawn. He poked his nose
into the basin of the fountain. One of the swans made a strange, low
sleepy cry; moved aimlessly about for an instant, then came to rest
and to sleep, apart from his companions. The hound moved into the
shrubbery; returned to the lawn.

As though the swan’s call or the dog’s nosing had evoked it, one of the
white peacocks emerged from the woods, spreading his tail with a superb
gesture of pride and triumph. The long white hound considered the
exhibition gravely. The peacock, consciously proud, sauntered over the
velvet surface of the lawn for a while alone. Then a companion joined
him and another. Finally, there were three great snowy sails floating
with a majestic movement across the grass. The display ended as soon
as it began. One of the trio suddenly returned to the treey shade; the
other two immediately followed. The lawn was deserted by all except the
fountain, which kept up untiringly its exquisite plaint. The boar-hound
sped noiselessly towards the house.

Arthur waited for a moment; then he slipped down from the tree; made
back over the way in which he had come. But he did not pursue the same
trail. He made a detour which would take him further around the lake.
And if he seemed cautious before, now he was caution itself. He moved
so slowly and carefully that no human could have known of his coming,
save that he had eyes, or ears or a nose superhumanly acute. And Arthur
had his reward.

Suddenly he came to an opening, which gave, past a little covert, on a
glade. And at the end of the glade, a group of deer were feeding in the
moonlight. Arthur did not move after his discovery of them; indeed he
seemed scarcely to breathe. There were nearly a dozen. The bucks and
does were pulling delicately at the brush-foliage; the fawns browsed
on the grass. In spite of Arthur’s caution, instinct told them that
something was wrong. The largest buck got it first. He stopped feeding,
lifted his head, sniffed the air suspiciously. Then one of the does
caught the contagion. She too lifted her head and for what, though
really a brief moment, seemed a long time, tested the atmosphere with
her dilated nostrils. Then the others, one after another, showed signs
of restlessness. Only the little fawns continued to stand, feeding
placidly at their mothers’ sides. But apparently the consensus of
testimony was too strongly in favor of retreat. For an instant, the
adults moved anxiously. Then suddenly as though the word of alarm had
been whispered into every velvety ear--dash! Flash! There came a series
of white gleams as all their short tails went up. And then the glade
was as empty as though there were no deer within a hundred miles.

Arthur went on. And now, as though he hoped for still another reward
of his patience, he moved with even greater care. But for a long time,
nothing happened. In the meantime clouds came up. Occasionally they
covered the moon. Then, the light being gone, the great harbors and the
wide straits between the clouds seemed to fill with stars. The moon
would start to emerge; her light would silver everything. The smaller
stars would retreat leaving only a few big ones to flare on.

Such an obscuration had come. And while the moon struggled as though
actually trying to pull herself free, a second cloud interposed itself
between her and the earth. The world turned dark--almost black.

The effect on Arthur was however to make him pick his way with an
even greater care. The trail here was not a blind one. It was the one
that ran presently into the path that led from the gypsy camp to the
Moraine. Ahead, Arthur could just make out the point where the trails
crossed.

Suddenly the moon came out with a great vivid flare. It was as though
an enormous searchlight had been turned on the earth. Something--it
seemed the mere ghost of a sound--arrested Arthur’s footsteps. He
stopped; stood stock still; listened; watched.

Something or somebody was coming up the trail from the direction of
the gypsy camp. In a moment he would pass the opening. It was human
apparently, for the sound was of human footsteps. They came nearer and
nearer. A straight, light figure with hair that gleamed, as though
burnished, passed into the moonlight.... It was Silva Burle.




CHAPTER XVI

MYSTERY


Arthur’s first inclination was to call. But something within him warned
him not to do that. Something just as imperative advised him to another
course of action. He waited a moment or two to let Silva get far enough
ahead, so that she could not possibly hear his footsteps. Then he
followed her.

She walked with an extraordinary swiftness--so swiftly indeed that
Arthur was put to it to keep up with her. However she had the advantage
over him in that she knew the trail perfectly. Her feet stumbled over
no obstacles; her arms hit no protruding branches; her face brushed
against no scratchy twigs. She moved indeed as though it were day.
Arthur was in a difficult situation. He must walk quickly to keep up
with her; but if he walked too quickly she would certainly hear him.

Presently she came to the place in the trail where it turned at right
angles on itself. Arthur, anticipating this, stopped in the shadow of
a tree in the far side of the path. Silva turned swiftly. It happened
that she did glance indifferently backwards over the way in which she
had come. But she could not have seen Arthur; for she went on at the
same composed high pace. But Arthur saw that she was carrying under her
arm a bottle of milk.

Arthur quickened his cautious footsteps; came in his turn to the fork
in the trail. There was Silva ahead, her white skirt fluttering on
both sides of her vigorous walking, much as the white foam of the sea
flutters away from the prow of the ship. She kept straight on and
Arthur kept straight on. The moon dipped behind clouds and dove out of
them; flashed her great blaze on the earth and shadowed it again. On
and on they went, the stalker and the stalked. They were approaching
the Moraine. Big stones began to lift out of the underbrush on either
side. Some were like great tables, flat and smooth; comfortable and
comforting. Others were perturbing--like huge monsters that had thrust
themselves out of the earth, were resting on their front paws or their
haunches even. Layers of rust-colored leaves--the leaves that had
been for many years falling--lay between them. And now and then the
moonlight caught on the rocks with a black glisten and on the leaves
with a red gleam; for the dew was falling.

Arthur began to wonder what he should do. He somehow took it for
granted that Silva was going to the Moraine; mainly because there
seemed no other place for her to go; though for what purpose he could
not guess. If for any reason she stopped there, he must soon become
visible to her. Indeed there were only two courses for him to take:
retreat by the path over which he had come or through the wood on
either side. He could not make up his mind to turn back. If he took the
second course, he would undoubtedly get lost. He would have to wait for
daylight to find his way home and that, he recognized at once, would be
stretching inexcusably the generous liberty which Mr. Westabrook had
given him. He might call to Silva. But again something inside seemed
to warn him not to make his presence known. He continued to follow the
vigorous figure ahead.

As though she were approaching the end of her journey, Silva was
hurrying faster and faster. Arthur hurried too. Silva broke into what
was a half run. It would have been, Arthur felt, a complete run, if she
were not carrying the bottle of milk so carefully. Arthur seethed with
perplexity. Why was she speeding so? What could she possibly have to do
at this spot and at this hour? What could require such urgent haste?
Well, perhaps he would know in another moment.

And then suddenly strange things happened all at once.

Silva’s rapid progress had, as it apparently neared its object, become
less careful. At any rate, an overhanging briar caught her hair; pulled
her up sharply. In her first effort to extricate herself, Silva turned
completely about; caught sight of Arthur’s figure a little way down the
trail.

She started so convulsively that even Arthur could see it. Then with a
swift wrench of her slender hand she tore her hair away; turned and ran
like a deer in the direction of the Moraine.

Arthur ran too. And as he ran he called, “Don’t be afraid, Silva. It’s
Arthur Duncan from the Little House. Don’t mind me! I won’t hurt you.”

But Silva only redoubled her speed. Arthur redoubled his. He was
gaining swiftly on her. He entered the Moraine. On the other side
Silva was just disappearing from it. “I tell you,” he called, “I’m not
going to hurt you. Stop! I want to speak to you!”

Silva did not answer. He heard a frenzied floundering among the
underbrush. For the noise Silva made, she might have been an elephant.
And then suddenly came silence--silence utter and complete.

Had she fainted? What could be the matter? What a silly girl to act
like that! Arthur rushed across the Moraine; penetrated the woods on
the other side.

Silva had disappeared as completely as though she had vanished into
the air. Arthur stared about him like one waking from a dream. Then he
began to search for her. Around rocks, into clumps of bushes he peered.
Nobody. Nothing.

“Silva Burle!” he called. “Silva! Silva! Where are you?” And then
because he was genuinely alarmed, “Please answer. Please! I’m afraid
you’re hurt.” Another search over a wider area. He mounted rocks this
time. Remembering how Silva could climb, he stared upwards into trees.
He crawled on hands and knees through every little thicket he found.
And all the time he kept calling. Still nobody. Still nothing. As far
as he could see, he was absolutely alone in that part of the wood.

After half an hour, he gave it up. But he was a little alarmed and very
much humiliated. He walked back over the trail to the Magic Mirror
and all the time his head was bent in the deepest thought. He found
the canoe; absently slid into it; mechanically paddled himself across
the water. And all the time he continued to think hard. “It’s like a
dream,” he thought. “I’d think anybody else was dreaming who told me
this.”

When he reached the barn, the whole mysterious episode seemed to
float out of his mind in the great wave of drowsiness which suddenly
beat through him. He fell immediately into slumber. But his sleep was
full of dreams, all so strange that when he awoke in the morning, his
experience of the night before threatened for a moment to take its
place among them. “But I didn’t dream the peacocks or the deer,” he
said to himself. “And I know I didn’t dream Silva!”

He said nothing of his experience to any of the other children, though
he found himself strangely tempted to tell Maida. But a kind of shyness
held him back. At times it occurred to him that Silva might be lying
injured somewhere in the woods. But always some instinct made him
believe that this was not true.

Halfway through the morning Granny Flynn sent him on an errand to the
village. As he came out of the Post Office, he ran into Silva Burle
just about to enter it. He tumbled off the wheel which he had just
mounted.

“Say,” he said without any other greeting, “where did you disappear to
last night?”

“Last night!” Silva repeated in a bland tone of mere curiousness. “What
do you mean by _last night_?”

“You know very well what I mean,” Arthur persisted. “Last night in the
Moraine--in the woods.”

“In the Moraine--in the woods,” Silva repeated. “I don’t know what
you’re talking about. I didn’t sleep in the woods last night. I slept
in my tent as usual.”

Arthur looked at her hard. “Well,” he said after a moment, “either
you’re telling the biggest whopper I ever listened to or you were
walking in your sleep.”

“Walking in my sleep,” Silva said scornfully, “you’re crazy.” And she
passed on.




CHAPTER XVII

CRESCENT MOON BEACH


It was drawing near the middle of August. And now with each sunrise,
the fun at the Little House seemed to double itself.

“I never saw such a place as this,” Rosie wailed once. “There aren’t
hours enough to do all the things you want to do every day; and not
days enough to do all you want to do every week.”

There was some justice in Rosie’s complaint. The day’s program of
swimming, tennis, croquet, bicycling, reading and games had been broken
into by the coming of the berry season. Blueberries and blackberries
were thick in the vicinity and the children enjoyed enormously eating
the fruit they had gathered.

Floribel taught the little girls how to make blueberry cake and
blackberry grunt and on their teacher’s day out, the Little House was
sure to have one of these delicacies for luncheon and another for
dinner. The Big Six tried to do everything of course; and as Laura
complained, they succeeded in doing everything badly and no one thing
very well. One day Maida appeared at the table with a radiant look of
one who has spawned an idea.

“Granny,” she said, “we haven’t had a picnic on the beach yet. Every
summer we go to the beach once at least. Can’t we go this week on
Floribel’s day out? We girls will cook the luncheon and pack it all up
nicely.”

“But the beach is pretty far away,” Mrs. Dore said warily. “How far is
it? Could you walk to it?”

“It’s between four and five miles,” Maida answered hazily. “You see
the little children could go in the motor and the rest of us--the Big
Six--could go on our bicycles.”

“But I don’t think,” Mrs. Dore said, “that I’d like you children to go
so far away without a grown person with you.”

“Yes, of course,” Maida said, “you and Granny come too.”

“But with Zeke and Floribel away,” Mrs. Dore protested, “who would
drive the automobile?”

Maida’s face fell. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “I never thought of that.”

All the faces about the table--they had grown bright in anticipation of
this new excursion--grew dark.

Zeke had already taught Arthur and Harold to run the machine, but Mr.
Westabrook’s orders against unlicensed persons driving it, were strict.
For a moment it looked as though the ocean-picnic must be given up.

“I think,” Maida faltered, “if I ask my father to lend us Botkins and
the big car, he’d do it.”

Mrs. Dore shook her head. “I wouldn’t like to have you do that, Maida,”
she said. “Your father has given us everything that he thinks necessary
for this household.” She added gratefully, “And more than any of us had
ever had in our lives before. I should certainly not like you to ask a
single thing more of him.”

Again gloom descended on the Big Six. And then hope showed her bright
face again.

“Ah’ll tell you what Ah’ll do,” Floribel, who was waiting on table,
broke in. “Zeke and Ah’ve wanted fo’ a long time to see the big ocean.
Now eff yo’ll let the lil’ children go on dat pic-a-nic, Mis’ Dore,
Zeke and Ah’ll go with them and tak’ the best of care of them.”

“Oh _would_ you, Floribel?” Rosie asked.

“Well, in that case,” Mrs. Dore decided thoughtfully, “I don’t see why
you shouldn’t all go.”

Madness at once broke out in both Sixes, Little and Big. Laura, Maida
and Rosie leaped to their feet and danced about the room. The little
children beat on the table with their spoons and the three boys
indulged in ear-splitting whistles.

The next Thursday, Floribel, Zeke, the Little Six and the lunch, packed
somehow into the machine, the Big Six on their bicycles, streaming
ahead like couriers, started off for the beach.

“Thank goodness we’ve remembered the salt this time,” Rosie said to
Arthur as they mounted their wheels, “I took care of that myself.”

It was a beautiful day, cool as it was sunny, brisk as it was warm. The
winding road led through South Satuit and then over a long stretch of
scrub-pine country, straight to the beach.

Just as they emerged from the Westabrook estate into South Satuit,
Maida’s bicycle made a sudden swerve. “Why I just saw Silva Burle!” she
called in a whisper to Rosie. “She was walking along the trail towards
the Little House. I wonder what she is doing there?”

“Well you may be very sure she isn’t calling on _us_,” Rosie declared,
“and if she is I’m delighted to think that Granny will say, ‘Not at
home!’”

“Still,” Maida said thoughtfully, “that trail leads directly to the
Little House. She must be going there for some reason.”

“Probably,” Laura remarked scornfully, “she’s hoping she’ll meet some
of us, so’s she can make faces at us.”

The automobile arrived at the beach first and the cyclists came
straggling in one after another. Crescent Moon Beach was like a deeply
cut silver crescent, furred at each tip of the crescent with a tight
grove of scrub-pines which grew down to the very water’s edge. Beyond
it, except for a single island, stretched unbroken the vast heaving
blue of the Atlantic. Under the lee of the southern tip of the crescent
was a line of half-a-dozen bath houses.

“What a wonderful, wonderful beach!” Laura commented.

“And there’s that island,” Dicky said, “that we see from the Tree
House--Spectacles Island, didn’t you say--oh no, I remember, Tom
Tiddler’s Ground. How I wish I could swim out to it. I have never been
on an island in my life. Could you swim as far as that, Arthur?”

Arthur laughed. “I should say not. Nobody but a professional could do
that--and perhaps he’d find it some pull. It’s much longer than it
looks, Dicky. Distances on the water are very deceiving.”

“What’s on the Island, Maida?” Dicky went on curiously. “Have you ever
been there?”

“Oh yes,” Maida answered, “once. I went on father’s yacht but I was
such a little little girl that I have only one impression--of great
trees and enormous rocks and thick underbrush.”

Dicky sighed. “I wish we could go on a picnic there!”

“What’s that over there?” Harold demanded, pointing to a spot far out
where a series of poles, connected by webs of fish-net, rose above the
water’s surface.

“Oh that’s a fish weir,” Maida declared electrically. “I’d forgotten
all about that. You see the tide’s going out. It goes out almost two
miles here. And if we follow it up, we can get into the weir and come
back before the tide overtakes us.”

Maida explained the situation to Floribel. Floribel turned to Zeke for
advice. Zeke corroborated Maida’s story. He had, he said, been in that
weir several times himself. Floribel said she would stay on the beach
with the Little Six while Zeke accompanied the Big Six. When they came
back, she added, lunch would be all spread out on the beach.

“The last bath house,” Maida informed them, “is ours. Now let’s get
into our bathing suits at once because we have no time to lose.”

It was only partially low tide when they arrived but it almost seemed
to the children that they could see the water slipping away towards the
horizon. When they emerged from the bath house, a patch of eelgrass,
not far off, made a brilliant green spot in the midst of the golden
sand. As the Big Six started towards the fish weir, the Little Six were
splashing about in the warm shallows near shore.

“Oh what fun this is!” Rosie said. “I love salt-water bathing more than
fresh water--I don’t know why. But somehow I always feel so much gayer.”

The salt water seemed to have an effect of gayety on all of them.
They chattered incessantly when they were not laughing or singing.
At times they came to hollows between the sand bars where the water
was waist-high, but in the main, the water came no farther than their
knees; and it continued to recede steadily before them. Sand-bar after
sand-bar bared itself to the light of the sun--stretched before them
in ridges of solid gold. Eelgrass--patch after patch--lifted above
the water; spread around them areas of brilliant green. Above, white
clouds and blue ether wove a radiant sky-ceiling. And between, the
gulls swooped and soared, circled and dashed, emitting their strange,
creaking cries. It seemed an hour at least to the Big Six before they
reached the weir, but in fact it had taken little more than half that
time.

Zeke found the entrance to the weir and they followed him in. Here the
water was waist-deep. Zeke explained the plan of the weir. It was, he
pointed out, nothing but a deep-sea trap for fish. The fish entered
through the narrow opening into a channel which led into the big
inner maze. Although it was very easy for them to float in, it was a
very difficult matter finding the way out. Caught there, as the tide
retreated, they stayed until the fisherman arrived with his cart and
shoveled them ignominiously into it.

“Oh, oh!” Laura shrieked suddenly. “This place is full of fish. One
just passed me! Oh, there’s another! And another!”

But by this time both the other girls were jumping and screaming
with their excitement; for fish were darting about them everywhere.
The boys, not at all nervous of course and very much excited, were
trying to drive the fish into corners to find out what they were. Zeke
identified them all easily enough--cod, sculpins, flounders, and perch.

“What’s that big thing?” Arthur exclaimed suddenly. “Jiminy
_crickets_!” he called excitedly. “It’s the biggest turtle I ever laid
my eyes on.”

The girls shrieked and stayed exactly where they were, clinging
together. But the males all ran in Arthur’s direction.

“Dat’s some turtle, believe muh,” commented Zeke.

“I’m going to take it home,” Arthur declared, “and put it in the Magic
Mirror.”

“The Magic Mirror!” Laura echoed. “Why I would never dare go in
swimming if I knew that huge thing was there.”

“We’ll keep it tied up with a rope,” Arthur went on excitedly. “It
can’t get where we go in swimming because the rope won’t be long
enough. Come on, fellows, help me get it.”

“How are you going to catch it?” Harold demanded.

“Lasso it!” Arthur declared, untying a stout rope which hung from one
end of the weir posts.

The prospect of catching such big game was too tempting for the males
of the party. And so while the girls dashed madly about, trying to get
out of their reach, screaming with excitement and holding on to each
other for protection, but really enjoying the situation very much--the
boys chased the turtle from corner to corner, until finally Arthur
managed to lasso a leathery paw and tie it captive to a weir post. How
he did this, he himself found it hard to say, because the water was
lashed to a miniature fury by the flounderings of both the turtle and
its captors. It was probably pure accident, he was humble enough to
assert. But having caught the creature, they were not content until
they had brought him ashore, and so the procession started beachwards,
Arthur pulling the turtle at the end of the rope.

It was a huge turtle at least two feet in diameter. It had wide
leathery flappers, a wicked looking head--as big, Rosie said, as her
alarm clock. But its shell was beautifully marked.

As they approached the beach they could see the great square of the
tablecloth laid out on the sand and Floribel busy piling up sandwiches
and hard-boiled eggs; fruit and cake. The Little Six came running to
meet them and then it became a problem to keep them out of the way
of the turtle’s snapping jaws. They had no difficulty however, with
Floribel, who screamed with terror at the sight of the strange creature
and would not allow them to bring it onto the beach. They ended by
mooring it, by means of a large rock, in one of the pools near the
shore.

Then, forgetting their prey for a while, they sat down to lunch. They
were ready to do full justice to it.

“Lord_ee_!” Floribel exclaimed once. “Dey’se salt enough here for an
army--shuah! Who put all dat salt in the basket?”

The three girls burst into giggles.

“I was so sure we’d forget the salt,” Maida said, “that I put in a pair
of salt-cellars.”

“I put in three,” declared Rosie.

“And I put in four,” confessed Laura.

After lunch, following the orders which Mrs. Dore had given them, they
sat on the beach for an hour before they went in bathing again. This
prolonged itself to much more than an hour because they began making
the inevitable collections of shells and stones to take home. Floribel
said that moon-stones were sometimes found on this beach and there
instantly began a frantic search for the small, translucent white
stones. Of course everybody found several of what he supposed were
invaluable gems. By this time the tide, which had turned just as they
left the fish weir, was now galloping up on the beach in great waves.
They had to pull the turtle farther and farther in shore. At length
they all went in bathing again; the Big Six diving through the waves
and occasionally getting “boiled”--which was the local term for being
whirled about--for their pains. Floribel permitted the Little Six to
play only in the rush of the waves after they broke.

After five o’clock, blissfully tired, excitedly happy, they piled the
little children into the machine; packed the turtle in the big lunch
hamper, tied the cover securely over him and started home.


Wild with excitement and the news of their find, they dashed into the
Little House.

“Oh Granny you’ll never guess what we’ve brought home with us,” Maida
exclaimed.

“And oh what a wonderful day we’ve had,” Rosie added.

“And how tired we are and how hungry,” Laura concluded.

The little children were all chattering with excitement; the boys were
attending to the turtle in the barn, preparatory to taking it to the
Magic Mirror.

“I’m glad you’ve had a good time, children,” Granny said gravely. “Your
father is here, Maida, and he wants to see you all in the living room.”

Something seemed to have gone out of the gayety of the day. What it was
or what made it go or where it went, Maida could not guess. Perhaps
it was a quality in Granny’s air and words. At any rate she said
instantly, “I’m going right in there, Granny, and Rosie will you please
tell the boys to come at once?”

Rosie too had caught an infection of this seriousness. She sped to the
barn. In three minutes, the Big Six had gathered in the living room.
Mr. Westabrook was sitting on the couch in front of the fire.

“Good afternoon, children,” he said quietly. “I told Granny to ask
you to come here the instant you came home, because I had something
to say to you. It occurred to me to-day that I would come over to the
Little House when you didn’t expect me and make an inspection. Hitherto
I have come regularly every Sunday. This is Thursday. I’m glad I did
because I found that neither the flower garden nor the vegetable
garden had been weeded for the last three days. The barn was in a very
disorderly confusion. I asked Granny how the girls had left their rooms
and although she didn’t want to tell me, she had to say that the beds
were not made and apparently nothing had been done. But the worst thing
of all that I have to say is that I find that the tennis court is all
kicked up as though it had been played on after a shower without having
first been rolled.”

There was an instant of silence in the room; a silence so great that
everybody could hear quite plainly the ticking of the grandfather’s
clock. Arthur spoke first.

“Mr. Westabrook,” he said in a low voice, “we ought to be ashamed of
ourselves and I certainly am. After all your kindness to us--I won’t
try to make any excuses because there are no excuses we can make.”

“It’s all my fault,” Harold admitted, “I’m supposed to run the boys’
end of the work and I have not held them up to keeping everything
right.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Dicky declared hotly, “no more than mine or
Arthur’s. We’re all to blame.”

“I’m awfully ashamed of myself, Mr. Westabrook,” Rosie confessed almost
in a whisper. “I wouldn’t blame you if you _never_ forgave us, but I
hope you will.”

“I don’t know how we got this way,” Laura said in perplexity. “We began
right.”

“We’ve been having such a good time,” Maida explained in a grave tone,
“that we’ve just let ourselves get careless.”

“Then,” Mr. Westabrook advised them, rising, “try not to let yourselves
get careless again.” He shook hands all around; and kissed his
daughter. “Fair warning,” he said, “I don’t know when I’m coming again,
but it won’t be when you expect me.”

It was a very subdued and a very tired little trio of girls who
went up-stairs and attended to their rooms. It was an even more
subdued--though a less tired--trio of boys who put the barn in order
and then trailing the turtle at the end of his rope, walked down to the
Magic Mirror, and tied him to a tree, and deposited him in the water
there for the night.




CHAPTER XVIII

EXPIATION


A very quiet group of children gathered at breakfast the next morning.
Conversation was intermittent and devoted mainly to piling offers of
assistance in the housework on Granny and Mrs. Dore.

“When you have finished your own work, we’ll see,” Mrs. Dore steadily
answered all these suggestions.

The children finished their work in record time and with the utmost
care. The girls swept and dusted their chambers. They washed the
furniture, the paint and the windows. Everything was taken out of
closets and bureau-drawers, shaken and carefully put back. They shook
rugs. The boys in a frenzy of emulation followed a program equally
detailed. Having accomplished all this, the Big Six again begged for
more work and Granny and Mrs. Dore, taking pity on the penitent little
sinners, thought up all kinds of odd jobs for them to perform.

At length, Maida said, “Now we’ve done all the work we can do, there’s
one other thing I’d like to see attended to. I woke up in the middle
of the night--I don’t know what woke me--but I began at once to think
of that turtle--that poor, horrid turtle. And it suddenly came into my
head that it was a very cruel thing to put a creature in fresh water
who is accustomed to salt water. I suppose it’ll kill him in time,
won’t it?” she appealed to Arthur.

“Gee _whillikins_,” Arthur answered, “I never thought of that! Of
course he’ll die. But what are we going to do about it?”

“I thought,” Maida began very falteringly, “if you would let us,
Granny, we’d ask Zeke to drive us over to the beach and we’d take the
turtle and put him back in the water where he came from. We won’t stay
there but a moment.”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t do that,” Mrs. Dore accorded them
thoughtfully.

“And as for me, I’ll be glad to be well rid of the craythur,” Granny
said shudderingly.

So it was settled. After luncheon, the three boys went down to the
Magic Mirror, hauled the poor awkward beast out of the water; pulled
it along the trail to the barn. They loaded it into the lunch hamper
again; stowed it in the automobile; and then Zeke drove them to the
beach.

Once there, they lifted the hamper out of the machine, removed the
cover and dumped its living contents onto the sand.

There was no question as to the turtle’s wishes in this matter. Without
an instant’s hesitation, he turned in the direction of the ocean;
and lumbered toward it over the sand--lumbered awkwardly but with a
surprising swiftness. The waves were piling in, like great ridges of
melted glass, green edged with shining, opalescent filigree. They
shattered themselves on the sand and seemed miraculously to turn into
great fans of green emerald trimmed with pearl-colored, foam lace.

The turtle struck the broken wave ... swam into it ... dove through
the next wave ... and the next ... and the next.... Suddenly they lost
sight of him.


When they returned, still unnaturally quiet, to the Little House, to
their great surprise Billy Potter came forward to meet them.

Their subdued spirits took an involuntary jump. Nevertheless they
greeted their guest in an unusually quiet way. Billy’s perceptions,
always keen, apparently leaped in an instant of calculation to the
truth. After a while, in which he devoted himself to the Little Six,
he suggested that the Big Six take a walk with him. They accepted the
invitation with alacrity and plunged into the woods.

When they were out of sight of the Little House, “Now what’s the
matter?” Billy Potter suddenly demanded.

They told him; all at once; each interrupting the other, piling
on excuses and explanations; interrupted with confessions and
self-accusals.

“We feel that we’ve treated Mr. Westabrook rottenly,” Arthur concluded.

“And we don’t know what to do to show him we’re sorry,” Rosie after a
pause added.

“That’s pretty bad,” Billy commented. “Now let’s think of some way out
of this.” He himself meditated for an interval, falling into a study so
deep that no one of the children dared interrupt it.

“I’ll tell you,” he burst out after a while, “Why not invite Mr.
Westabrook down for an afternoon--to make another inspection of the
house--and to stay for supper. You probably haven’t shown him for a
long time how well you can cook.”

“No, we haven’t,” Maida said. “I think father has eaten only one meal
that we girls cooked.”

“I think that would be lovely,” Rosie agreed.

“Let’s do it as quickly as possible,” Arthur suggested. “This is Friday
morning. Why don’t you invite him for Monday night?”

The children caught the suggestion at once. That night, working
together--for Billy Potter stayed over only one train--they painfully
drafted a formal invitation to Mr. Westabrook to spend Monday afternoon
with them and stay to supper. They posted it the next morning and
almost by return mail, they received a formal acceptance.

Monday was a day of the most frantic work that the Little House had
ever seen. Everything was swept that could be swept; dusted that
could be dusted; washed that could be washed; polished that could be
polished. Rosie even washed off the stepping stones that led to the
Little House. And Maida not to be outdone, shined the brass knocker
on the door and the knob. Laura was only stopped in time from pinning
flypaper, which she had bought with her own pocket money, on the
outside of the screen door.

“There are no flies in the house,” Mrs. Dore protested, “and we can’t
catch all the flies in the outside world.”

The boys cleaned the barn, the little cellar to the house, its tiny
garret. They rolled and re-rolled the tennis court. They begged for
other work and Mrs. Dore gave them all the table silver to polish and
some pots, obstinately black, to scrape.

When Mr. Westabrook came, the place looked, as he said, as though they
had cleaned the outside with manicure tools and the inside with the
aid of a microscope. The supper which, in deference to Mr. Westabrook,
included a single hot dish, consisted of one of Rosie’s delicious
chowders; one of Maida’s delicious blueberry cakes; one of Laura’s
delicious salads; and a freezer full of the boys’ delicious ice-cream.

Mr. Westabrook said that he had eaten meals all over the United States
and in nearly every country in Europe and he could not recall any one
that he had enjoyed more than this.

That night the Big Six went to bed with clear consciences.




CHAPTER XIX

MAIDA’S MOOD


“What are you so quiet about, Maida?” Dicky asked at breakfast a few
mornings later. “I don’t think you’ve said a word since you’ve got up.”

“Haven’t I?” Maida replied. But she added nothing.

At first because of the noise which prevailed at breakfasts in the
Little House, nobody noticed Maida’s continued silence. Then finally
Rosie Brine made comment on it. “Sleepy-head! Sleepy-head!” she teased.
“Wake up and talk. You’re not in bed asleep. You’re sitting at the
table.”

Maida opened her lips to speak but closed them quickly on something
which it was apparent, she even repented thinking. She shut her lips
firmly and maintained her silence.

“S’eepy-head! S’eepy-head!” the little mimic, Delia, prattled. “Wate up
and tot. Not in bed as’eep. Sitting at table.”

Everybody laughed. Everybody always laughed at Delia’s strenuous
efforts to produce as copious a stream of conversation as the
grown-ups. But Maida only bit her lips.

The talk drifted among the older children to plans for the day.

“Perhaps you will give us your views, Miss Westabrook,” Laura said
after some discussion, with a touch of purely friendly sarcasm. “That
is if you will condescend to talk with us.”

“Oh can’t I be quiet once in a while,” Maida exclaimed pettishly,
“without everybody speaking of it!” She rose from the table. “I’m tired
of talking!” She walked quickly out of the dining room and ran upstairs
to her own chamber. The children stared for a moment petrified.

“Why I never saw Maida cross before,” Rosie said in almost an awed
tone. “I wonder what can be the matter. I hope I didn’t say anything--”

“No, of course you didn’t,” Arthur answered. “Maida got out of the
wrong side of her bed this morning--that’s all.”

“Well,” Laura concluded generously, “if anybody’s got a right to be
cross once in a while, it’s Maida. She’s always so sweet.”

After breakfast, the children separated, as was the custom of the
Little House, to the early morning tasks. But Rosie and Laura lingered
about, talking in low tones, before one went to the library and the
other into the living room to do her daily stint of dusting. After this
work was finished, they proceeded to the garden and plucked flowers
together.

It was phlox season and Laura cut great bunches of blossoms that ran
all the shades from white to a deep magenta through pink, vermilion,
lavender and purple-blue. But Rosie chose caligulas--changelessly
orange; zinnias--purple, garnet, crimson; marigolds--yellow and gold.

“Oh how lovely they look,” Laura exclaimed burying her face in the
delicately-perfumed mass of phlox. She put her harvest on a rock and
helped Rosie with the more difficult work of gathering nasturtiums. The
vines and plants were now full of blossoms. It was impossible to keep
ahead of them. They picked all they could.

“I hope Maida isn’t sick,” Laura said after a while.

“I don’t believe she is,” Rosie reassured her.

“I wonder if we ought not to go up to her room,” Laura mused. “Let’s!”

Rosie reflected. “No, I think we’d better wait until after we’ve come
back from the errands. Maida wants to be alone so seldom that I guess
we’d better not interrupt her. Besides I heard her slam her door hard
and then lock it. I guess that means she doesn’t want anybody around
for a time.”

“I guess it does too,” Laura agreed. “It isn’t my turn to go to market,
but I’m going with you this morning, Rosie. It’ll give Maida a chance
to be alone for a while.”

The little girls trundled their bicycles out of the barn; mounted them
and speeded down the long trail which led to the road.


In the meantime, Maida still remained in her room. She made her bed
with fierce determined motions, as though it were a work of destruction
rather than construction. She dusted her bureau with swift slapping
strokes. Then she sat down by the window. Why was she cross, she didn’t
know; but undoubtedly she _was_ cross. She didn’t want to go anywhere;
she didn’t want to play games; to see anybody; least of all to talk.
Why--when ordinarily she was so sociable, she should have this feeling
she had no idea. Nevertheless it was there.

From various directions, sound of voices came to her; Rosie’s and
Laura’s from the garden; the boys from the barn; the little children
from House Rock. Rosie and Laura were nearer, but she could not hear
what they were saying. And of course she made no attempt to listen.
Later she heard them go around to the barn--she knew they were off on
the morning marketing. Still Maida continued to sit listlessly looking
out of the window.

A long time seemed to go by.

Presently she heard in the distance, the sound of Laura and Rosie
returning. They were evidently in a great state of excitement. She
could hear them chattering about something as they came up the trail to
the house. She did not feel like talking, but she knew it was her duty
to meet them, to apologize for her rudeness, to go on with the usual
games of the day. She caught the rattle with which the two girls put
their bicycles in place; then their swift rush to the kitchen. At the
door she got in Rosie’s high excited tones, “Where’s Maida, Granny?”

“Still upstairs,” Granny answered. “I haven’t heard her stir.”

“We’ve got something to tell her,” Rosie went on swiftly.

“And the most dreadful thing has happened,” Laura put in
simultaneously. Then talking together in phrases that broke one against
the other or overlapped, “A dreadful accident ... Silva Burle ... this
morning ... she was on her bicycle ... man just learning to run an
automobile ... knocked her off ... picked up senseless.... It happened
in front of Fosdick house ... took her in ... there now....”

“How is the poor choild?” Maida heard Granny ask compassionately.

“Nothing broken,” Laura answered eagerly, “but it was a long time
before she came to.”

“She’s not unconscious any longer,” Rosie concluded the story. “She’s
asleep, but she moans and mutters all the time.”

Maida listened, horrified. She felt that she ought to go downstairs and
talk with the girls. She felt that she ought to get on her bicycle, go
at once to see Silva.

Apparently Mrs. Dore said something to that effect; for Rosie answered
promptly, “Oh no, nobody’s allowed to see her yet.”

Somehow if she could not go to Silva, Maida did not feel like talking.
Not yet at any rate. Why not get away from the house until her strange
mood passed?




CHAPTER XX

MAIDA’S FIND


Maida crept slowly out of her room; stole softly down the stairs; ran
quietly to a side entrance; opened the screen door gently; closed it
inaudibly; dashed down the trail to the Magic Mirror. She arrived at
the boathouse panting. But she did not wait to recover her breath.
Quickly she unlocked the door and pulled out one of the canoes, leaped
into it so swiftly that she almost upset it, paddled as rapidly as she
could towards the center of the lake.

It was an unusually hot day. And paddling was hot work. The water
looked tempting. Maida battled with a temptation, which she had never
known before, to jump overboard just as she was in her fresh clean
dress and take a long swim. But she knew that Granny Flynn would
disapprove of this and she relinquished her project with a tired sigh.
She did not stop paddling until she reached the other side of the lake.
Then she drew the canoe in close to the shore, under an overhanging
tree; lay down in it; stared vacantly up at the sky.

“I know what’s the matter with me,” she thought suddenly. “I’m tired. I
didn’t sleep well last night. I had a dreadful dream--Now what was that
dream? It was a nightmare really and it seemed to last so long. What
was it--Oh _what_ was it?”

She groped in her memory in the way one does to remember a haunting but
elusive dream. It was like trying, in pitch darkness, to pick out one
rag from scores of others in a rag bag. Then suddenly a ray of light
seemed to pierce that darkness and she put her hand on the right rag.

Very late, long after midnight indeed, it seemed to her that somebody
came into her room, that she half-waked; spoke. That somebody did not
answer and she fell asleep again. Yes, she remembered now, that that
somebody seemed to come in through the window. She fell asleep and yet
not entirely asleep.... That somebody moved about the room ... looked
at everything.... That somebody stopped near the little hair-cloth
trunk which contained Lucy’s clothes. After a while ... that somebody
went away ... through the window.... But all night long, a sense
of trouble and disturbance kept bringing Maida out of deep sleep to
ruffled wakefulness; then sent her back into a heavy and fatiguing
slumber.

Thinking this over and staring up at the blue sky, Maida drifted off to
sleep. She woke--it must have been nearly two hours later--perfectly
refreshed. But she did not go back immediately to the Little House.
Instead, the sight of a columbine in the woods made her determine
to land. She knew that Rosie particularly loved the columbines and
pursuing, half absently, the trail which went to the Moraine, she soon
gathered a great armful.

Maida became so absorbed in this pleasant duty of reparation that she
went further than she intended. In fact, it was with a real sense
of surprise--and a slight tingle of terror--that suddenly she found
herself at the approach to the Moraine itself. She had not been
there since the extraordinary day of the picnic and although she had
not let her mind dwell on the curious experience of that occasion,
she had by no means forgotten it. For a moment, she hesitated about
going further. And then she caught a glimpse, across the rust-brown
pine-needle-covered expanse, of a great clump of columbines faintly
nodding their delicate heads. Involuntarily Maida dashed across the
Moraine and picked them. More appeared beyond. She picked all these and
then just beyond, she caught sight of a tiny field of columbines. Maida
moved in their direction, plumped herself down in the midst of their
beautiful living carpet. It was cool there and quiet. The pines held
the sun out, although their needles were all filmed with iridescence;
but they let little glimpses of the sky through their branches. Some
strange wood insect burst into a long strident buzz.

Suddenly there came, as though from the very ground under her feet, a
long wailing cry.

Maida turned white. Her heart leaped so high that she felt with another
such impulse it would break through her chest. She jumped to her feet,
still clutching her flowers, raced across the Moraine into the path.
She had not gone very far before something stopped her; not an obstacle
but a thought. She had expected, remembering the day of the picnic,
that the voice would be joined by two others. This did not happen. That
first voice maintained its eerie call. The thought was, “That cry is
not the cry of anything frightening like a goblin or a wild animal, or
a tramp--it is the wail of a baby.”

Maida stood for a moment just where she had stopped. The cry began
again. Terror surged through Maida. But she clinched her hands and
made herself listen. Yes, that was what it was--the wail of a baby.
Could it be some little baby animal crying for its mother--a fawn
like Betsy’s or--and here Maida’s hair rose on her head again--a baby
bear? Her common sense immediately rejected this theory. There were no
bears in the woods. And if it were a baby deer, she would be ashamed
of being afraid of a baby deer when Betsy showed no fear. For another
interval she stood still fighting her cowardice. Then suddenly she
took her resolution in hand. “I’m going to find out _what_ it is,” she
said aloud. Perhaps she was assisted in this by the cessation of the
mysterious wail. Only for a moment however! Her resolution received
another weakening blow by the sudden resumption of the uncanny noise.
But she did not actually stop, she only faltered. For the farther she
walked across the Moraine, the more it sounded like the crying of--not
a baby animal--but a regular baby. Suddenly all Maida’s fear vanished
forever. “I am not afraid any more,” she said to herself. And she
wasn’t.

The hard thing was to discover where the cry came from. It seemed under
her feet. She plunged here, there, beyond--everywhere, looking up and
down but finding nothing. Then she began a more systematic search.
Starting with the very edge of the Moraine she took every rock as it
came along, searched around and over it, each clump of bushes, parted
them and walked through them. Still the cry kept up. Occasionally she
stopped to listen. “That baby’s sick,” she said once, and later, “I do
believe it’s hungry.”

Ahead, a big rock thrust out of the earth like an elephant sitting on
its haunches. At one side, two bushes grew at so acute an angle and
with branches so thickly leaved, that the great surface of the rock was
concealed. Maida parted them.

Underneath there was no rocky surface. The bushes concealed a small low
opening to what looked like a cave. Was it a cave? Where did it lead?
How far? Would--and again Maida’s heart spun with terror--would she
confront an enraged mother bear if she entered it? But these questions
all died in Maida’s mind. For, emerging undisputedly from the cave,
came the fretful cry of a baby.

Without further question, Maida dropped to her hands and knees and
crawled into the opening. Crawled _down_ rather; for the entrance
sloped at first. Then, it began to grow level. The crying grew louder.

It was a big cave. The end was lost in shadow but in the light from the
entrance, Maida could see something lying, not far off, on a heap of
bed clothes. As she looked, a tiny hand came up and waved in the air.
Maida could not stand upright yet. But she hurried over to that tiny
hand. She was beginning to get the glimmer of a little white face.

It _was_ a baby.

The baby put up its hands to her. Maida lifted it from the ground
and made rapidly backwards to the cave opening. It was a lovely
baby--Maida decided that at once--a girl, getting towards a year old,
brown-complexioned with a thick shock of dark hair and big brown eyes.
For a moment, it looked at Maida in surprise and even in baby distrust;
then it began to cry. Its open mouth displayed four little white teeth.

Maida put the baby down on the soft grass in the shade of some bushes.
She returned to the cave. She found a candle there; some matches in an
iron box. She lighted the candle. There was one pile of baby clothes,
unironed though perfectly clean, but in tatters. Beside them was
another pile. Somehow these seemed familiar. Maida looked closely.

They were Lucy’s clothes.

Then--lightnings poured through Maida’s mind--It was not a
dream--Somebody had come into her room ... robbed her ... robbed little
Lucy.... But she must not think of that now, with a crying, perhaps a
starving baby on her hands. Further back was a bundle of hay, pressed
down as though somebody older slept there. There was a little alcohol
lamp and the materials for warming milk; milk bottles but no milk.

Maida returned to the baby, who had resumed its crying; took it into
her lap; rocked it.

What should she do? The baby must belong to somebody. But where was
that somebody? It was hungry now. She felt sure of that. It seemed to
her that she ought to take the baby home. And yet suppose the parent
should come back? Then she would be in the position of stealing a baby.
What should she do? She could not go off and leave it. Nor could she
stay indefinitely. She had not even told them at the Little House
where she was going. They would be worried about her. They would
think that, like Betsy, she was lost. Pretty soon they might send out
searching parties. How she regretted her pettishness of the morning.
And still if it had not been for that, she would not have come here;
would not have found the baby. What _should_ she do?

She put her hands over her eyes, as though shutting out the sight of
things made it easier to think. Perhaps it did. For suddenly it came to
her that the first thing to consider was the baby. Babies must not be
neglected. Babies must be fed. It was a serious matter for them to go
too long without their milk. Suddenly she pulled her little red morocco
diary from her pocket; tore out a page. With the little pencil that lay
in the loop of the diary she wrote:


     I have taken your baby to my home--the Little House. It is at
     the end of the trail just across the lake. I was afraid you had
     deserted her and she would get sick and die. I am sorry if you are
     worried, but you can have your baby at once by claiming her.


A phrase slipped from she knew not where into her mind. She concluded
with it: “and proving property.” She signed her own name and under it
wrote, “Daughter of Jerome Westabrook, financier.”

Her mind made up, Maida worked quickly. Holding the baby in her
arms, she walked swiftly down the trail to the canoe. Here a problem
presented itself.

She could not hold the baby in her arms, nor could she let the hot
sun of that hot August day pour on the little head. After a great
deal of difficulty and some maneuvering, she managed to stand up some
thickly-leaved branches so that they made a shade. She placed the baby
on one of the canoe cushions in its shadow; stepped into the canoe.

Never had Maida paddled so carefully or so well. On the other side,
she tethered the canoe; lifted the baby out. She had cried all the way
across the lake and was still crying fitfully.

“Somebody may come and break the canoe,” Maida surmised swiftly, “but I
can’t wait to put it away.” She hurried in the direction of the Little
House. “What a surprise I’ve got for them,” her thoughts ran. She was
toiling along slowly now, for by this time, the baby had grown heavy as
lead. Maida had to stop many times to rest her arms. Her back ached as
though it would break. “They’ll all want to keep this baby forever and
I wish we could.”

But the surprise was not all for the others, nor indeed much as
compared with their surprise for Maida. For as Maida neared the house,
Rosie came flying down the path. Maida saw that her face was white and
that great tears were pouring down her cheeks.

“Oh, Maida,” she sobbed, “where have you been? We’ve been looking
for you everywhere. A most terrible thing has happened. Poor Mrs.
Dore”--she burst for an instant into uncontrollable sobbing; then
composed herself, “--fell down the cellar stairs and broke her leg.
We’ve had a dreadful time--Where did you get that baby?”

“In a cave,” Maida answered faintly. “Will you carry her, Rosie, I’m so
tired. Go on quickly. Tell me all about it--”

Rosie took the baby into her expert arms; continued. “Well, Arthur
called up the Satuit doctor and he came with an ambulance and they’ve
taken her to the Satuit Center hospital. Granny Flynn had to go with
her--and we’re all alone. We’ll have to run the house ourselves until
Granny can get back. Poor Dicky feels dreadful and now we’ve got this
baby on our hands. Everything happens at once, doesn’t it? Gracious,
I’ll have to give this poor little thing something to eat right off.
That’s a hungry cry.”




CHAPTER XXI

TRAGEDY


Indoors was the scene and sound of confusion. Delia, sensing the panic
that lay in the atmosphere, was crying wildly for her mother. The
other children, unchecked, were running about the house in a game that
seemed an improvised combination of tag and hide-and-go-seek. Their
excited cries rang from above. Arthur was at the telephone trying
to get Central. Beside him, a pencil ready to take down anything of
importance, very wan-faced and pale, drooped Dicky. From the dining
room came the clatter of plates as Harold and Laura went practically to
work to set the table.

Arthur stared at Maida and Rosie as they entered with their strange
bundle; stopped his telephoning to say, “Where did you get that baby?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment,” Maida said wearily, “but now we’ve got to
work fast and I never was so tired in my life. Oh Dicky dear, I’m so
sorry for you! Poor, poor, Mrs. Dore and poor, poor Granny!”

But it was Rosie who really took the situation in charge, Rosie who so
loved babies, Rosie who having helped so long in the care of her own
little brother, knew exactly what to do.

“Tell Laura to get some milk from the ice chest, Arthur!” she commanded
crisply, “and warm it up on the stove as quickly as possible. Then
bring it upstairs to us. Maida, you come with me!” Rosie marched up to
the bathroom and Maida meekly followed. On the first floor, “Get Mrs.
Dore’s sewing board!” Rosie ordered and Maida got it. In the bathroom,
Rosie placed the sewing board across the tub, close to the hand bowl;
began to undress the baby.

There were few things to take off. They were all loose, comparatively
clean, but ragged. Soon the little creature lay on the soft towels that
Rosie had spread on the sewing board, kicking feebly. The removal of
her clothes seemed to ease her. Her cry abated its violence a bit. Only
what was the translation of a baby sob came now and then. Rosie filled
the bowl with warm water, then with the gentlest of soothing strokes
and using the softest sponge she could find, she began to bathe the
baby. Its crying died down completely. It responded to this cooling
treatment with a little soft coo that drew from Maida, “Oh the little
darling. Don’t you love her already, Rosie?”

“I love all babies,” Rosie said in a business-like tone, sopping the
little girl’s downy head. She dried her carefully--deft little pattings
that seemed merely pettings--with the finest towel she could get.

“Run to Mrs. Dore’s room and get Delia’s powder!” she commanded briefly
again. When Maida returned, she covered the little glowing form with
the cool powder. The baby’s eyelids began to droop.

“See how sleepy it is,” Rosie said with a kind of triumph. “Ah there
comes Laura. Oh I wonder if she had the sense to put the milk in one of
Delia’s old bottles?”

Laura had had the sense to do this, and was obviously proud of her
foresight. Very expertly, Rosie turned a few drops from the bottle onto
the back of her hand; decided it was not too hot; inserted the nipple
in the baby’s mouth. The little girl pulled on it like one famished;
pulled so hard and long and deep that Rosie had, once or twice, to take
the bottle away to keep her from choking. The little hands always
reached out for the bottle and after a few instants Rosie gave it to
her again.

In the meantime, Maida answered the stream of Laura’s questions, and
Laura answered the torrent of Maida’s.

The baby pulled continuously at the bottle. Rosie had to lift the lower
end higher and higher. After a long while, the baby dropped the nipple
with a little sigh of relaxation. Her eyes, which had been growing
heavier and heavier closed ... opened ... closed....

Now she was asleep.

“I don’t know what her feeding hours are,” Rosie said. “I’ll give her
another feeding at four this afternoon. I’m going to fix the alarm
clock so that I’ll wake at ten to-night, then I’ll let her go until
morning. I don’t believe she has more than one night feeding. Even if
she does, she can get along without it, one night. She seems famished
now though. I never saw such a hungry baby.”

“You wake me up,” Maida said almost jealously. “Remember she’s _my_
baby.”

“Yes,” Rosie agreed, “I’ll wake you.” She knit her satiny brows. “I
wonder whose baby she is? They must be awfully worried about her by
this time.”

“Oh, I left a note,” Maida protested.

“Are you sure you left it where they’d see it?”

Maida nodded. “I put a stone on it to hold it down and I surrounded it
by other pages that I tore out of my diary and put stones on them. You
could not fail to see it.”

Rosie lifted the baby and carried it to her bed. “I don’t think she
could fall off,” she said. “But to make sure I’ll put chairs up against
her and bank her around with pillows. Now we’d better let her sleep.”

In the meantime, Arthur had finished his telephoning. Mrs. Dore was as
well as could be expected; was resting quietly. The break was a simple
one. All she needed, in order to recover, was time and rest. The three
boys had managed to stop Delia’s sobs; had captured the five other
children and were keeping them quiet. Now they bombarded Maida with
questions.

For the third time, Maida told the story of the baby. “Well, Maida, you
certainly were brave,” Laura declared, “to follow that noise until you
found out what it was. I would have run as fast as I could and as far
as I could. That is, if I hadn’t fainted.”

“No,” Maida protested, “I wasn’t brave I wish I had been. At first I
was as frightened as I could be. But when it flashed on me that it was
a baby crying, it didn’t take any courage to find out where the baby
was.”

“I wonder whose baby it is,” Harold said.

Everybody said this at least once, everybody except Arthur, but Arthur
said nothing. He was thinking hard.

“Something queer happened to me the other night,” he broke out
suddenly. “I didn’t tell you all about it because--because--Well
somehow I couldn’t. I didn’t know what the answer was and I was ashamed
that a girl could beat me like that.”

“Like what?” Rosie demanded. “What are you talking about? Oh, Arthur,
do tell us!”

Arthur related in all its detail his experience with Silva Burle. “It
made me wild,” he admitted, “to think that a girl could find a path
that I couldn’t see and get away from me when I could run twice as fast
as she--Well not twice as fast,” he corrected himself honestly, “but a
great deal faster.”

“Well of course Silva’s a queer girl,” was Rosie’s comment. She added,
“She won’t be running down any paths for some time yet I’m afraid, poor
thing!”

“I think Silva had something to do with that baby,” Arthur guessed
shrewdly.

“What nonsense!” Rosie said briskly. “What would she be doing taking
care of somebody’s baby in the woods?”

“But she had a bottle of milk under her arm,” Arthur persisted.

“Yes,” Rosie said in an uncertain voice, “and that reminds me that I
have seen her before carrying bottles of milk.”

“Oh I think somebody’s probably left that baby there for the day,”
Laura said, “some tramp--or somebody.”

“But it must have been the baby crying that frightened us on the day of
the picnic,” Harold declared.

“Well then,” Laura explained, “it was the same baby and the same
people, whoever they were, left the baby in the cave that day too.”

The telephone rang. Arthur answered it. He listened for a moment, then
he said, “Yes, of course. We’ll be all right. Tell her not to worry.”
He turned to the others. “Poor Granny’s so upset that she wants to stay
near the hospital all night, so she can see Mrs. Dore the first thing
to-morrow morning. She asked if we could get along by ourselves until
Floribel came to-night and of course I said we could.”

“Of course we can,” Maida reassured him.

“Oh I’m so glad Granny can stay. It does seem as though everything came
at once.”

“Things go by three’s,” Rosie asserted.

“Well what are our three?” Maida inquired. “There was Mrs. Dore’s
accident, finding the baby and-- What’s the third?”

“You wait,” Rosie prophesied loftily, “It’ll come. But now the thing to
do is to get lunch. Thank goodness for all those cooking lessons we’ve
had. Don’t you remember, Maida, that your father said that we’d never
know when we’d be put in a situation that we’d be very glad we could
cook.”

“What shall we have for luncheon?” Maida asked and her voice quavered a
little.

“We’d better look into the ice chest and see what’s there,” suggested
the practical Laura.

“Oh here’s all this nice stew left over from day before yesterday!”
Rosie’s head was concealed by the ice chest door but her tone was that
of one who has found diamonds. “That’s nice because all we’ve got to do
to that is warm it up. I’ll attend to the stew.”

“And here’s some delicious tarts,” Laura exclaimed, “that Granny must
have made this morning. We’ll have them for dessert.”

“Now while I’m warming the stew,” Rosie commanded, “you two cut the
bread; fill the milk pitchers and put the butter on the table.”

When they summoned the others to lunch, they found the seats all
changed about. This was the work of the practical Rosie. “You must each
of you take care of one of the children,” Rosie explained. “Now all of
you begin buttering the bread while I am dishing out the stew.”

Laura had Betsy, and Dicky, Delia. Harold had one of the Clark twins
and Laura the other. Maida took care of both Timmie and Molly; so that
Rosie had nothing to do but serve.

“My goodness, I never realized how much work Granny and Mrs. Dore do,”
Laura said once, “and how patient they are. Delia, that’s your fourth
slice of bread and butter. Now you _must_ drink your milk.”




CHAPTER XXII

SILVA’S MESSAGE


“After the dishes are washed and wiped, let’s set the table for
supper,” Laura suggested. “Floribel will be so tired when she gets
home, and thinks of all the work she’ll have to do alone.”

So the girls added this to the work they had already done.

“Shall we go in bathing this afternoon?” Rosie asked when the last
knife and fork was in place.

“You all go if you want,” Maida answered, “I don’t think I want to
swim. Somehow I feel as though I’d like to stay about the house. So
many things have happened that I’m worried about going away.”

“So do I, Maida,” Laura agreed emphatically.

So although the boys went in swimming as usual, the girls stayed at
home.

“I feel tired, too,” Maida remarked. They took books from the library
and settled quietly in the Tree Room where they read and talked all
the afternoon. They were interrupted twice--once by the boys who, as
though they had a responsibility too, cut their swimming short--and by
the baby.

When the baby awoke, late in the afternoon, Rosie brought her
downstairs into the air for a while. They all declared that she looked
quite a different child. A tinge of pink had come into her soft brown
cheeks and the warmth and moisture of her nap had curled the brown hair
in her neck.

“Oh you sweet _sweet_ darling!” Maida kissed the little girl
ecstatically. “Oh how I wish your parents would give you to me! That’s
all we need in the Little House--a baby. Delia’s not quite little
enough.” She caught Delia and kissed her.

“Delia bid dirl,” Delia protested.

Even the boys were amused and entertained by their little visitor.
Arthur deigned to make faces for her. They amused her enormously,
and when Harold unloosed an ear-splitting whistle, she turned round,
delighted eyes in his direction. But that she was still tired was
evident; she kept falling into little naps.

“I don’t think I’ll bathe her again so soon,” Rosie meditated with
knitted brows when they had taken her upstairs for the night.
“To-morrow I’ll give her a bath in the morning and another at night.
But now I’ll just wash her face and hands and let her have her bottle.
You do it this time, Maida and to-morrow,” added Rosie, generous
always, “we’ll take turns bathing and feeding her.”

As they came downstairs Laura said, “I wonder what time it is. Oh half
past five!”

“Five!” Maida exclaimed. “Why Floribel ought to have been home at five!
What train can she get now?”

Nobody knew, but Arthur remembered there was a time-table in the
library. They clustered about him. To most of them it was as difficult
as Greek; but to Arthur, who had had some experience in traveling and
to Maida who had had a great deal, it did not seem insolvable.

They puzzled over it together.

“There’s a train at six from Boston and another at seven,” they finally
decided. “And that’s all.”

“She must have lost the three from Boston,” Maida declared. “But the
six from Boston isn’t due here until eight. And in the meantime we’ll
have to get supper.”

“Say let us boys help,” Arthur suggested. “It must be a big job
cooking for twelve. I know how to cook,” he added unexpectedly.

“Where did you learn, Arthur?” Maida asked with interest.

“Tramping with my father,” Arthur answered briefly. “We often camped in
the woods for days.”

“Supper isn’t so hard as dinner,” Rosie said hopefully. “Now I propose
that we have a combination salad with hard-boiled eggs cut up in it.
You see there’s a lot of cold vegetables in the ice chest and we can
make a custard and orange pudding.”

The whole group, three girls and three boys, bustled into the kitchen.
From a drawer full of aprons, Rosie took out enough for all of them.
The little girls wore the aprons as they should be worn, but in the
boys’ case, Rosie tied them around their necks. “I’ve seen boys cook
before,” she announced scornfully, “and when they get through, they
generally look as though they had fallen into a barrel of something.”

The boys protested loudly. But to some extent Rosie’s pungent comment
seemed to be justified. Arthur for instance squeezed the orange juice
into his own eye. He yelled so loudly at this unexpected deluge that
Harold dropped an egg on his coat.

“There I told you!” Rosie declared scathingly. “What did you pick out
an egg to drop for, Harold, why didn’t you drop a potato?”

However pride goeth before destruction and the contemptuous Rosie was
soon caught up with; for clandestinely stealing a long sliver of ice
from the high ice box, she seized it in such a way that it slipped out
of her hand and dropped down her neck.

“Serves you right,” Arthur declared with delight. With heartless
interest they all watched her wriggles before she was able to secure
and extricate the slippery, rapidly melting sliver.

“You look as though you had had the hose squirted on you,” said Dicky.

But their supper was good. The salad--lettuce with cold peas, string
beans, tomatoes and sliced eggs--was so pretty that Maida said she
thought it ought to be used as an ornament for the center of the table.
As for the custard and orange pudding--to which the gifted Laura had
added a delicious meringue--they ate and ate.

“I never tasted anything so good in all my life,” Rosie sighed. “I wish
we’d made a bathtubful. Once I had a dream,” she went on pensively,
“where it looked as though I was going to have all the sweet things
to eat I wanted. I dreamed that when I came out in the morning to
go to school, the whole neighborhood was made of pink and white
candy--everything, houses, streets, lamp-posts. I took a big bite right
out of my fence.”

“And what happened then?” Maida asked breathlessly.

“I woke up, goose. Wouldn’t you _know_ that that was what would happen
with a whole worldful of candy to be eaten?”

After talking a while longer, they all filed into the living room;
began to look about for their books. Suddenly the telephone bell rang.
Maida was nearest. “I hope nothing else has happened,” she said as she
took off the receiver.

“I want to talk with Maida Westabrook,” came a girl’s voice over
the wire to her. Strange it was and yet it had a familiar ring; the
strangeness was its weakness and its breathlessness.

“I am Maida Westabrook.”

“Listen! I must talk quick. They will be back and stop me. I am Silva
Burle. They think I am asleep. I have tried to tell them. They won’t
listen. They think I am raving. I’m not. I’ve got my senses. My baby
sister, Nesta, is in a cave on the other side of the lake. Tyma is
away. There’s nobody to feed her. She’ll starve--”

“I found her this afternoon, Silva,” Maida interrupted. “She’s upstairs
in the Little House now--fast asleep.”

“Oh!” Silva’s voice dropped almost as though she were faint. Then
suspiciously, “Are you saying this to me because you think I’m raving?
Oh tell me the truth. I ask God to be my witness that I am telling
_you_ the truth.”

“Yes, Silva,” Maida said steadily, “I am telling you the truth. I give
you my word of honor. I went across the lake this morning. I heard the
baby crying. I followed the sound and found her. Don’t worry any more
about her. We’ll keep her here just as long as you’re ill.” She started
to add the news of Mrs. Dore’s accident, of Granny’s and Floribel’s
absence, but a sudden discreet impulse bade her not to go on. Instead
she said, “How did you happen to have the baby in that cave?”

“It’s a long story,” answered Silva weakly. “I can’t tell you now. Will
you come to see me to-morrow?”

“Yes,” Maida agreed, “in the morning.”

“You promise?” Silva’s weak voice entreated; it almost threatened.

“I cross my throat and my heart!” Unseen by Silva, Maida solemnly
performed these rituals of the pledged word.

“And you’re sure she’s all right?”

“Sure,” Maida answered. “You ought to hear her laugh and coo.”

“Ask her how often they feed her,” came from Rosie’s clear voice from
behind. Maida repeated the question.

“Four times a day--at nine; at twelve; at three and at six, and then at
night.”

“That’s what Rosie said,” Maida explained, “four in the day and one at
night.”

“I can never thank you enough.” Silva’s voice had something in it that
Maida had never heard there before. “But some day-- Here they are
coming up the stairs. I must get back to bed.” Silva’s voice cut off
quickly. Maida listened for a while, but there was no sound.

A babble of questions assailed her when she dropped the receiver. She
told them all she knew.

“Who would have thought that baby would have turned out to be Silva
Burle’s sister!” Rosie remarked thoughtfully.

“Well now,” Laura prophesied with a faint lilt of triumph, “I guess she
won’t be so pig-headed.”

“Nesta,” Maida said. “What a sweet name! I’ll go to-morrow morning
at--” And then the telephone rang again. Maida took the message. “It’s
Floribel,” she announced in a serious voice. “They’ve lost the last
train. We’ve got to get breakfast.”

“If we’re going to get up as early as that,” Laura declared, “I’m going
to bed now. I’m so tired that I’m cross.”

“I told you things always go by three’s,” Rosie triumphantly reminded
them.




CHAPTER XXIII

SILVA’S STORY


When Maida woke up the next morning, it was to the sound of a baby’s
crying. It was not however a sick cry; it was a sleepy cry. She glanced
swiftly at the clock; then jumped out of bed. Rosie was standing in the
doorway, Nesta, wearing one of Delia’s nightgowns, in her arms.

“You never woke me up, Rosie Brine,” Maida accused her friend.

“I tried to,” Rosie replied. “Honest I did. But you couldn’t seem to
wake up. And when I realized what a day you had yesterday and what a
day might be before you, I thought it would be better to let you sleep.
Laura and I got breakfast. We’ve given the baby her bath and I am now
taking her to bed.”

Maida kissed the little curly, dusky head. “She looks fine,” she said
approvingly. “I’m so glad I can give Silva such good news.”

“What time did you say you had to call there?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“It’s now half past eight,” Rosie said. “And here comes Laura with your
breakfast.”

As Rosie disappeared with her sleeping burden, Laura appeared at the
stairs carrying a tray.

“Hop back into bed, Maida Westabrook,” she said serenely. “You’re going
to have your breakfast in bed this morning--like a princess.”

Maida meekly hopped back as ordered and Laura placed the tray on the
bed in front of her. On it, the peel so divided that it looked like a
great golden-petaled flower, was an orange; a dish of oatmeal; an egg
in an egg cup; two pieces of toast; a small pitcher of milk; sugar.
Around the plate was wreathed nasturtiums, flowers and leaves.

“Oh how good it looks!” Maida said; and then after a few moments of
enthusiastic eating, “Oh, how good it _tastes_! How dainty you’ve made
this tray, Laura! I’m sure you’re going to be the best housekeeper
among us. You like housekeeping, don’t you?”

“I just love it,” Laura replied.

“I hate it.” Rosie who now reappeared in the doorway, declared
emphatically. “I wish you could buy blocks of dishes the way you buy
blocks of paper; so’s you could tear off a clean set for every meal;
then burn them up. I wish you could buy blocks of clothes just the same
way.”

“What a queer thing you are, Rosie!” Laura exclaimed. “I just love to
have pretty things, crocheted and knit and embroidered--dainty china
and glass--and keep everything neat and shining.”

Maida reflectively tapped the top of her egg; meditatively removed
the little bit of broken shell; absently salted and buttered it;
thoughtfully tasted it. “I don’t know what I like,” she declared after
a while, “I like to do anything--if I’m doing it with people I love.
But I just despise to do anything with people I don’t like.”

An hour later, Maida, one foot on the pedal of her bicycle was
accepting last orders in regard to marketing from Rosie and Laura;
giving equally hurried advice to them.

“Don’t forget to buy all the different kinds of berries you can find,”
Rosie said. “Berries make such an easy dessert.”

“And oh, if there are any tomatoes yet, order all you can find, Maida,”
Laura chimed in. “I can make so many things with tomatoes: tomato and
macaroni; tomato and crackers; stewed tomatoes and boiled tomatoes.”

“And don’t let the fire go out,” Maida replied, “and always have some
one near the telephone if anybody calls up. And remember, if the baby
doesn’t seem all right, telephone for the doctor at once. Get the
hospital on the telephone at nine o’clock and ask how Mrs. Dore is this
morning.” Then mounting her machine in a flash, Maida was off like a
bird.

“Who would ever have thought,” Rosie said looking after her, “that the
Maida Westabrook who first came to Primrose Court--so pale and thin and
lame--would ever grow into such a strong girl? Do you remember, Laura?”

“Of course I do. My mother didn’t think she was going to live.”

In the meantime, Maida was proceeding down the dewy trail, the prey to
some worry but with a gradually-growing, comfortable feeling that her
troubles were all over and that now things would go smoothly. She did
all the marketing that had been intrusted to her and was even able,
being the first on the spot, to secure a basket of early tomatoes for
Laura. As for berries--they were everywhere. Maida ordered, a little
recklessly, blueberries, blackberries, currants. It was ten o’clock
as she had agreed--Maida was a very prompt little girl, having been
brought up to promptness by a business-like father--ten o’clock to the
dot, when she walked up the Fosdick path and knocked on the door by
means of a big brass knocker.

A maid servant opened the door; but just behind appeared a white-haired
lady in a black silk and black silk mitts; a three-cornered bit of
black lace on her soft hair.

“You are Maida Westabrook,” she said smiling, “and you have come to see
our little invalid. She’s awake and waiting for you. If you will follow
me, I will take you to her.”

Maida followed Mrs. Fosdick up broad carpeted stairs and down a long
sunny hallway. At the very end, the old lady pushed open a door. Silva
was lying on a day couch, placed near a back window which overlooked
the garden. A light gayly-flowered down puff covered her. Silva looked
white but her strange amber-colored eyes seemed to hold a drop of fire.

“Good morning, Silva,” Maida said.

“Good morning,” Silva answered, but she used the words awkwardly, like
one who has not been accustomed to this morning greeting.

“I’m glad you are better,” Maida went on and then paused in a little
embarrassment. After an instant in which Silva said nothing she added,
“How did it happen?”

Mrs. Fosdick interrupted. “I am going to leave you little girls alone
to talk. I know you’ll have things to tell each other,” her kind old
eyes smiled understandingly, “that you don’t want grown-ups to hear.”

“Oh no,” Maida said involuntarily but this was only instinctive
politeness on her part. She very much desired to be alone with Silva.
Silva was apparently too honest to say anything. She waited until Mrs.
Fosdick’s footsteps were lost to hearing. Then she pulled herself
upright with a sudden jerk. “How’s Nesta?” she asked breathlessly.

“She’s all right. She slept all night long without waking once--except
when Rosie fed her at ten--and this morning she looks as sweet and
dainty as a rose-bud. Don’t worry about Nesta, Silva. She’s all right.
It’s you we’re worrying about.”

But this did not appear to interest Silva. “How did you find her?” she
demanded.

Maida told the story of her visit to the Moraine Land, not leaving out
a detail. Silva listened intently, her strange eyes unwinkingly fixed
on Maida’s face. “What time was this?” Silva asked.

Maida told her.

“Oh she only missed one feeding then,” Silva said in a tone of acute
relief. “You can just imagine,” she went on, “when I came out of the
faint enough to remember about the baby, how I felt. I tried to tell
them here about Nesta, but nobody would listen to me. They thought I
was raving and I can’t blame them for that of course. I begged them, I
screamed at them; then suddenly I thought of you--why I don’t know. But
somehow I knew I could trust you. I asked them to call you up or let me
call you up. But they wouldn’t. ‘There! There!’ they would say, ‘Lie
down and sleep! You’ll be all right in the morning.’ Oh what I went
through! I thought I was going crazy! And then I heard somebody using
the telephone in the hall. And when they left me to go down to dinner,
I crept out and called you up. Nobody heard me. They don’t know yet
that I telephoned. I told them last night that I knew you’d come this
morning.”

“It must have made you dizzy to stand up,” Maida said sympathetically.

“It did. At first I thought I couldn’t stand it. But I had to do it and
so I did. You are sure Nesta is all right?”

“_Sure!_” Maida reiterated, smiling. “But why didn’t you call up Aunt
Save?”

“She was at the Warneford Fair. They all went. Tyma went too. Aunt
Save’s telling fortunes. Tyma and I have been making baskets for a
month. He thought he could probably sell them all in three days. We
talked it all over. One of us had to go and the other to stay with the
baby and of course I was the one to stay with Nesta. Tyma won’t be back
until to-morrow.”

“But I don’t understand why Nesta was in the cave,” Maida declared in a
puzzled tone.

Silva closed her eyes for a moment and she sighed. It was a long sigh
and a weary one to come from a little girl’s lips.

“We’ve kept her there a month,” she said. “We stole her--Tyma and I.”

“_Stole_ her!” Maida echoed in a shocked tone. “Stole her! From whom?”

“From my father,” Silva answered and two big tears formed slowly in her
eyes. They hung on the end of her long lashes but they did not drop.
Maida handed Silva her handkerchief. Silva wiped the tears away. No
more came, and she went on with her story in a perfectly composed way.

“It’s a queer story to tell and--and I’m so ashamed. You see my
mother died last February when Nesta was about three months old.
After mother’s death, we had all the care of her--Tyma and I. It was
very hard because my father--” She stopped for an instant and seemed
to choke on what she was going to say. Then she went on steadily.
“My father began to get drunk--more and more-- But that wasn’t the
worst. He began to treat us badly--and I was always worried about
Nesta--sometimes I was afraid he’d hurt her-- Sometimes--” She stopped
and looked at Maida imploringly.

Maida nodded as though she understood.

“He was worse to Tyma though, and so Tyma ran away. He joined Aunt Save
and she told him to stay with them. One day he was exploring the woods
and he discovered that cave. Well things got worse and worse at home--
And-- And-- And then father told me he was going to be married again. I
didn’t like the--the one he was going to marry. I knew she didn’t mind
his drinking. She--used to drink too. She didn’t like me--nor Tyma--nor
Nesta. I could see that she didn’t want the care of Nesta. Tyma and I
could take care of ourselves, but I knew she would be cruel to Nesta.”

Silva paused; for this time it was Maida’s eyes that filled. Silva held
out Maida’s handkerchief and Maida took it; and wiped her tears away.

“Go on,” Maida said.

“Tyma came back one night very late. Father never knew he was there.
He threw pebbles against my window and I came out and talked to him.
He told me a plan. It was for us to run away and take Nesta with us
and keep her hidden in the cave. He said he’d take the baby first.
Then after a few days, I was to go to live with Aunt Save. You see if
I was to run away with the baby, father would know. But if the baby
was stolen while I was with him and when he thought Tyma was with Aunt
Save, he could not blame it onto either of us.”

“Oh Silva!” Maida gasped. “What a terrible thing to do-- I mean--” She
thought an instant. “What a terrible thing to _have_ to do! How could
you do it? I couldn’t.”

“You can do anything,” Silva said in a voice strangely stern in one so
young, “if you have to do it. So we planned it all very carefully.
Tyma went back to Aunt Save and then he returned a few nights later.
While I was in the field with father, he took the baby and went back
with her to Satuit; put her in the cave. He went by night and almost
always through the woods. Nobody saw him. When Aunt Save woke up the
next morning, Tyma was in his tent.”

“What did your father say?”

“He was wild. He thought at once it was Tyma and he went over to see
Aunt Save. Tyma was there, but of course there was no baby about. Aunt
Save said that Tyma had no baby with him and father knew that Aunt Save
wouldn’t lie to him. She asked father if he didn’t want me to come and
live with her as long as he was going to get married. Father said yes
and when he came back, he told me to go to Aunt Save. He gave me my car
fare and I went.”

“Didn’t he do anything more to find the baby?” Maida asked in a
horrified tone.

“Oh yes--he hunted everywhere--he talked about her all the time. And
then after ten days or so he told the police and there were articles in
the newspapers with his picture and Nesta’s--it didn’t look anything
like her. Reporters came to see him. But after a while nobody cared.
People don’t care what happens to gypsies.” Silva’s voice was bitter.
“Then he got married and as his wife didn’t want Nesta, he stopped
bothering about her.”

“And do you mean to tell me,” Maida said in an awed voice, “that you
kept the baby in the cave nearly two months?”

“Ever since just after you children came to the Little House. We were
planning to steal Nesta when we saw you first. That’s why we had to
be so hateful to you-- We had to do everything we could to keep you
away from the cave. That’s why we acted so terribly that first day
when you were swimming in the lake and that’s why we broke your canoes
and that’s why we stole all your lunch the day of the picnic. That
day, Tyma was in the cave with the baby and I was bringing a bottle
of milk and a little doll for her. She was too little to play with a
doll, but I wanted her to have one. Rosie Brine caught sight of me. I
dodged around the bushes and got into the cave. I think she would have
thought she imagined me if I hadn’t dropped the doll. Tyma and I sat
there trembling.... And then we realized that you were going to eat
your lunches right near.... The baby was asleep; but we were frightened
to death for fear she would wake up and cry ... and then the idea
came to us to steal your lunches ... and ruin everything so you would
think tramps had been there.... And then the baby _did_ cry.... Oh how
frightened we were! Tyma and I clung to each other and the same idea
came to us both at once. I began to moan very loud. And so did Tyma.
And then you couldn’t trace the sound and it frightened you and you all
ran away. Tyma said you would never come back and you didn’t. That is,
except one night, when I saw Arthur Duncan.”

“I never heard or read anything like this,” Maida declared solemnly.
“How did you manage to take care of the baby--and bathe her and feed
her?”

“It was very hard,” Silva said simply. “Tyma and I took turns in
spending the night in the cave. Aunt Save never knew; for we waited
until everybody was asleep before we left the camp. I used to go once
in the morning to heat water and bathe her and once in the afternoon to
take her out in the sunlight. We made baskets all the time so that we
could buy milk. Getting the milk to her though without being seen--Oh
how we had to plan! I bought a little lamp and heated her milk over it.
And then I was so worried! I knew it was going to be very troublesome
in a little while because it was only a question of time before Nesta
would creep. Fortunately she was backward about everything--especially
walking. We planned to barricade the front of the cave. But what we
should do when winter came, we could not guess. And then we were so
bothered about clothes--” Silva stopped and cast her eyes downward.
“This is so hard to tell you!”

“Go on!” Maida urged.

“I broke into your house night before last, and stole some doll
clothes. That first day you came to visit Aunt Save, I heard you
talking with her about a doll you had as big as a baby, and how you
kept her clothes in a little hair-cloth trunk under your window in your
room. I watched the house until I found out which room was yours. There
was a great tree in front of it. And that night, when everybody had
gone to sleep, I climbed in your window and took all the doll clothes.
You see some nights were rainy and I was afraid she wouldn’t be warm
enough. Please excuse me if you can. I will give them all back.”

Maida was silent for an instant struggling with the situation too
complicated for her young mind.

“Of course,” she said at last in a tremulous voice, “stealing is always
wrong. I would have given you Lucy’s clothes if you had asked me for
them.”

“I didn’t know that you would,” Silva faltered. “And I didn’t dare tell
you about Nesta.”

“Of course I saw Lucy’s clothes in the cave,” Maida went on. Her eyes
were downcast. “Let’s not speak of it again. Very likely, I would have
done the same thing if I had been in your place-- Only I suppose I
wouldn’t have stolen the baby in the beginning.” She paused and then
added honestly, “But perhaps that’s only because I wouldn’t have had
the courage. What are you going to do now-- I mean when you get well?”

“I don’t know--” Silva answered drearily. “I’ll have to wait until
Tyma comes back. Everybody’ll know then. Aunt Save will make me write
to father that I have Nesta. He’ll take Nesta away from me and that
dreadful woman will have the care of her--”

And now Silva put her head in the hollow of her elbow and sobbed. But
they were not the sobs of a child. They were hard and tearless. They
shook Silva’s whole body. Maida rushed to her side. She put her arms
about Silva; kissed her again and again. “Don’t think of it any more,
Silva dear,” she begged. “I know it isn’t as bad as you fancy. Will you
let me tell my father about it? My father is a wonderful man. It is
almost as though he had magic power--like a genie. He’ll find some way
out for you, I’m sure. Will you let me tell him?”

It was some moments before Silva’s whispered “Yes” came from between
her racking sobs. But very soon thereafter she sat up. “Here comes
somebody,” she whispered. “Please don’t say anything about Nesta.”




CHAPTER XXIV

GUESTS


When Maida turned the bend in the path just before it came out on the
Little House, she found Rosie, Laura, Arthur, Harold and Dicky drawn up
in a straight soldier-like line.

“We have to report that--” they all chanted in a solemn voice.

“Mother is very comfortable and will return to us in a week,” announced
the radiant Dicky.

“Granny Flynn has come back,” announced the beaming Laura.

“Floribel is in the kitchen,” announced the smiling Harold.

“Zeke is in the garden,” announced the triumphant Arthur.

“Your father is in the living room waiting for you,” announced the
sparkling Rosie.

“My father!” Maida exclaimed in a happy voice. “My father! Oh what a
blessing that is!” She dropped her bicycle. “Oh Rosie, will you put my
wheel away for me? I want to see my father so much.” She didn’t wait
for Rosie’s hearty, “Yes, of course, goose!” but raced across the grass.

In a few minutes an unprecedented activity broke out in the Little
House. Down stairs in the living room, Mr. Westabrook, who had been
most of the time glued to the telephone, was still telephoning.
Up-stairs in the Little House, Floribel was getting the spare room
ready for one guest. Up-stairs in the barn, Zeke was putting up a cot
for another. In the kitchen, Rosie was frantically making popovers.
Between the flower garden and the spare room, Laura and Maida were
swinging like a pair of active pendulums, decorating with flowers.
Outside on lawn and in vegetable garden, the boys were working
frantically putting everything in what Rosie called “apple pie order.”
Everywhere the smaller children, to whom for the moment nobody was
paying any attention, were getting in everybody’s way.

About noon the big gray limousine appeared at the end of the trail.
Zeke hurried down to it. He and Botkins lifted out the slight figure
lying in the back, bore it up the path to the house and over the stairs
to the guest chamber. An excited queue of children--all the young
inhabitants of the Little House in fact--followed.

“All right, Silva?” Maida was enquiring and to Silva’s faint “Yes,”
Rosie was saying, “We’re all awfully glad you’re going to be here
with us,” and “Just as soon as you are well enough, you’ve got to
teach us how to make those beautiful baskets,” Laura was contributing.
The boys didn’t seem to be able to do anything but they were making
attempts--highly unsuccessful ones to be sure--to assist the two men.

Up-stairs, they left Silva alone with the girls. Maida immediately took
off the long rusty coat that Silva was wearing, her worn and stained
middy blouse; her ragged skirt; undressed her; put on first one of her
own simple white nightgowns and over it her favorite dressing gown
of organdie muslin with pink ribbon. Laura brought a pair of pink
bed shoes; slipped them on Silva’s slender feet. Rosie contributed a
boudoir cap of white lace with pink ribbons which she had managed to
fashion in the hour they had waited for Silva. And then in answer to
the beseeching look in Silva’s eyes, Rosie brought the cooing little
Nesta and put her in her sister’s arms.

“My father is going to send for your father, Silva,” Maida explained.
“He is going to ask him to let you and Tyma and the baby stay with
us. Your father will say yes, Silva--people always say yes to my
father--and then if you like us, we want you to live with us as long as
we stay here.”

“Only a few weeks longer,” Rosie added in a wailing voice, “then school
begins.”

Silva, only half hearing, was kissing her little sister with violent
flurries of kisses. And her eyes were filling with tears. She made no
effort to check them because that would have been impossible. Finally
she put her head down on the arm of her chair and cried. The others
kept a frightened silence. Rosie, recovering first, noiselessly removed
Nesta. Silva made no attempt to keep her. Maida slipped into the
bathroom and came back with a wet face cloth and a towel; proceeded
to bathe Silva’s face. Silva submitted meekly. Laura disappeared and
returned with a bottle of toilet water with which she sprinkled Silva.

“Oh you are so good to me,” Silva said when she could control her
voice. “And when I think of how I treated you-- I didn’t want to
though. I--I had to. But when I’m well, I’ll gladly show you how to
make baskets. And I know where the berries grow thickest and biggest
... I’ll take you to all my secret places ... I do thank you! I do! I
do! With all my heart!”




CHAPTER XXV

THE END OF SUMMER


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 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_ 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!”

“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 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?”

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! 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 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!”




CHAPTER XXVI

PROMISE


“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.”

“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.”

“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.

“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 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 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.

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 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 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_?”


THE END




Three Stories of Fun and Friendship

THE MAIDA BOOKS

by INEZ HAYNES IRWIN


MAIDA’S LITTLE SHOP

In a darling little shop of her own Maida makes many friends with the
school children who buy her fascinating wares.


MAIDA’S LITTLE HOUSE

All of her friends spend a happy summer in Maida’s perfect little house
that has everything a child could wish for.


MAIDA’S LITTLE SCHOOL

Three delightful grownups come to visit and the children study many
subjects without knowing that they are really “going to school.”

GROSSET & DUNLAP      _Publishers_      NEW YORK




The MARY and JERRY MYSTERY STORIES

By FRANCIS HUNT


THE MESSENGER DOG’S SECRET

The big police dog Flanders carried a strange message in his collar. By
following its directions, Mary and Jerry Denton were able to bring a
lost fortune to someone in need.


THE MYSTERY OF THE TOY BANK

Jerry Denton was saving for a bicycle, but when his little bank
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about a happy solution.


THE STORY THE PARROT TOLD

A fire in a pet shop started a long chain of adventures for Mary
and Jerry Denton. The tale the talking parrot told caused plenty of
excitement and mystery before the bird was restored to its rightful
owner.


THE SECRET OF THE MISSING CLOWN

Mary and Jerry have many happy adventures at the circus while searching
for the missing clown and his beautiful pony, Silverfeet.

GROSSET & DUNLAP      _Publishers_      NEW YORK




THE MARY JANE SERIES

By CLARA INGRAM JUDSON


Take a trip with Mary Jane. She is the heroine of this popular series
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MARY JANE--HER BOOK
MARY JANE--HER VISIT
MARY JANE’S KINDERGARTEN
MARY JANE DOWN SOUTH
MARY JANE’S CITY HOME
MARY JANE IN NEW ENGLAND
MARY JANE’S COUNTRY HOME
MARY JANE AT SCHOOL
MARY JANE IN CANADA
MARY JANE’S SUMMER FUN
MARY JANE’S WINTER SPORTS
MARY JANE’S VACATION
MARY JANE IN ENGLAND
MARY JANE IN SCOTLAND
MARY JANE IN FRANCE
MARY JANE IN SWITZERLAND
MARY JANE IN ITALY

GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK




_There is the high, happy spirit of youth in these famous_

BOOKS FOR GIRLS

by JANE D. ABBOTT


APRILLY

The charming story of a young girl, child of the circus, and the
adventures which led to her goal of happiness.


HIGHACRES

A school story of Jerry Travis and her chum Gyp Westley. A thread of
romance and mystery in Jerry’s life runs through the tale.


KEINETH

How Keineth Randolph kept a secret--a war secret--for a whole year
makes one of the best stories ever written for girls.


RED ROBIN

In attempting to bring happiness into the lives of mill workers, Robin
Forsythe, heir to a fortune, has many strange adventures.


HEYDAY

Twenty-three! The heyday of life. Jay, a small town girl, finds
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LARKSPUR

Especially interesting to any Girl Scout because it is the story of a
Girl Scout who is poor and has to help her mother.


HAPPY HOUSE

How an old family quarrel is healed through a misunderstanding and an
old homestead becomes a “happy house” in reality.

GROSSET & DUNLAP      _Publishers_      NEW YORK