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.”