“Yes, itisperfectly 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,sweetcloset!” 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, runningfrantically 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. Theoh’sandah’sdied 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 happinessthis 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.”
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 notdreamingam 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 restdidwant 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 toysin 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 anythinglike 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 didallthe cooking. I love it.”
“You wouldn’t love it if you did it forsixteen 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’trowa canoe. You row aboatand youpaddlea 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 thesunlight 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. Sheunlocked 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.”
“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 withsilver,’ 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. Theyall, 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 fullof 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 singleleap 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.”
“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—juston 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 oftheir 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 workfirst. 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 putother 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 superiorsize 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 youdoforget,” 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’relying 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 sofast. 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 satupright 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 atthe 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!”
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’sA 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 withLittle MenandLittle Women, and Harold began for the third timeKidnapped. 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, sheisasleep.”
This was the first day at the Little House.
“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 bedbadly,” Rosie said with emphasis. “How about you Laura?”
“Well,” Laura replied slowly, “Ihavemade one.”
Rosie groaned. “I know what it will look like,” she commented. “Now Icanmake 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 meeknoeswere 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 andit seems to me there’s only one fair way of doing it and that is for us to weed the flower gardenall togetherevery morning; each one of us to take care of their own room—”
“Herown room,” Maida corrected. She added roguishly, “I thought you were beginning to feel too important, Rosie.”
“All right, smarty-cat!Herown 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 Iwere 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 inthe 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.
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. Doreor 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 andtalked 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 asingle thing.”