“Now,” Maida said, “we are in the original house. This used to be the old kitchen. Now it’s the living room. Look at the great fireplace with the oven at one side. This big wooden shovel was used to put the pans of bread in and to take them out. See how sweet all the old paneling is! That’s been here from the beginning and the old H hinges and the old butterfly hinges! And these darling little closets! And those big old beams with the spatter work on them. Father had this great fender built around the fireplace so that the little children couldn’t fall into it when there’s a fire.”
“Are we going to have fires in that enormous place?” Rosie asked.
“I wish the temperature would fall to below zero,” Laura declared recklessly.
“I should think it would take four-foot logs,” Arthur had been examining the fireplace. Crouching down he had even walked into it; stared up into the chimney.
“It does,” Maida informed him proudly. “Oh, there, Rosie,” she pointed to a little triangular brass object on the hearth, “is a trivet!”
Rosie pounced on it. “It looks like a brass cricket! What’s it for?”
“To put the tea pot on, close to the fire so it will keep hot.”
Out of the living room through the northern door they came into one of the two smaller front rooms. The walls were lined with books. And here was a big table with a reading lamp, a desk, a few comfortable chairs.
“This is the library,” Maida announced proudly.
“I’d like to shut myself up here for a month,” Dicky, who was a great reader, said wistfully. “It looks as if all the books were interesting.”