"Eliza first!" cried Marjorie, remembering the old cook's friendliness toward them all; "come on!"
Following Midget's lead, the trio went tearing through the house to the kitchen.
Uncle Steve paused in the library where the others were, and said to his sister, "They're the same Maynard children, Helen, if they are a year older. We enjoyed Marjorie last summer, and I know we'll enjoy Kitty this year,—but how you can live with them all at once I can't understand!"
"It's habit," said Mrs. Maynard, smiling, "you know, Steve, you can get used to 'most anything."
"It seems to agree with you, Helen, at any rate," said Grandma Sherwood, looking at her daughter's pink cheeks and bright eyes.
Meanwhile, the younger Maynards had reached the kitchen, and were dancing round Eliza, with shouts of glee.
"Are you glad to see me again, Eliza?" asked Marjorie, flinging herself into the arms of the stout Irishwoman.
"Glad is it, Miss Midget? Faith, I'm thot glad I kin hardly see ye fer gladness! Ye've grow'd,—but I do say not so much as I expicted! But Masther King, now he's as high as the church shpire! And as fer Miss Kitty,—arrah, but she's the dumplin' darlin'! Stan' out there now, Miss Kitty, an' let me look at yez! Och! but yer the foine gurrul! An' it's ye thot's comin' to spend the summer. My! but the toimes we'll be havin'!"
It was a custom of the Maynards for one of the children to spend each summer at Grandma Sherwood's, and as Marjorie had been there last year, it was now Kitty's turn.
"Yes, I'm coming, Eliza," she said, in her sedate way, "but I'm not going to stay now, you know; we're all going on a tour. But I'll come back here the first of June, and stay a long time."