“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.