“Let’s keep it like this,” said Mary. “Now I shan’t be needing always to ask John to pass the salt.”
“I don’t think it’s fair!” protested John. “Now, Mary has the seat by the button, and she can make the table turn when she likes. I wish I had a button, too.”
“You’d keep the table whirling all the time, John,” laughed his father. “No, it is better as it is. We chose our seats this way, before we knew about the lively center-piece. Let’s stick to what chance gave us. Aunt Nan’s house seems to be a kind of good-luck game, doesn’t it?”
But in spite of the queer things that were continually happening there, it did not take long for the Corliss family to feel quite at home in this old house, and in Crowfield. Mary was admitted to the High School, and found herself in the same class with Katy Summers, which pleased them both very much. They soon became the closest chums. John went to the Grammar School, where he found some nice boys of his own age who lived just down the road; Ralph and James Perry, cousins in opposite houses, and Billy Barton a little farther on.
These promptly formed the Big Four; and the neighborhood of the Big Four was the liveliest in town. The Corliss house, with its collections and curiosities, became their favorite meeting-place, and in these days could hardly recognize itself with the merry streams of children who were always running in and out, up and down the stairs. It was fortunate that Dr. Corliss, who kept himself shut up in his study with the book he was writing, was not of a nervous or easily distracted temperament.
As for Mrs. Corliss—being a mother, she just smiled and loved everybody. It was her idea that first of all a home should be a happy place for the family and for every one who came there. The first thing she did was to send for the familiar furniture of the city house which they had left when Dr. Corliss was obliged to give up his professorship in college and move into the country. Now the queer rooms of Aunt Nan’s inhospitable old house were much less queer and much more homelike than they had ever been, and every corner radiated a merry hospitality.
But in the library nothing was changed. Mary would not let anything be moved from the place in which Aunt Nan had put it. For she had grown much attached to the old lady’s memory, since the finding of that little watch and chain.
You may be sure that Mary and John looked about the library carefully, to see if more of the same kind of nice joke might not be concealed somewhere. But they found nothing. It was not until nearly a week later, when there came a rainy Saturday, that they found time to look at the books themselves.
“Hello! Here’s a funny book to find in an old lady’s library!” cried John. “It’s our old friend ‘Master Skylark,’ one of the nicest books I know. But how do you suppose a children’s book came to be here, Mary? Daddy says for years Aunt Nan never allowed any children in the house.”
“I wonder!” said Mary. “And here’s another child’s book, right here on the desk. I noticed it the first time I came in here, but I never opened it before. ‘Shakespeare the Boy’ is the name of it. I wonder if it is interesting? I like Shakespeare. We read his plays in school, and once I wrote a composition about him, you know.”