“Oh Timmie,” Dorothy Clark remonstrated, “I should think you’d be ashamed of yourself. Of course they’s fairies.”
“Well, anyway,” Timmie still sturdily stood his ground, “if they are, I don’t believe they’ll come and play with us.”
“Well, I believe they will,” Mabel Clark reinforced her sister.
But Betsy was capering up and down the length and breadth of the Fairy Ring. “I know the fairies will come!” she sang aloud. “I know the fairies will come! I know the fairies will come!”
When the older children left the Fairy Ring, all six of the little children were capering too. The last thing they heard was Delia’s mimicking words: “I know the fairz tum! I know the fairz tum! I know the fairz tum!”
“That’s over,” Maida said. “I told Granny Flynn,” she explained, “that I’d show the little children a nice place to play. Now let’s go into the living room and talk. There are a whole lot of things that I’ve got to tell you that I haven’t had time to tell you yet.”
Although it was a June day—and as warm and sunny as June knows how to be—they gathered about the big fireplace where already logs were piled and ready to burn. The boys sat on the fender; the girls drew up chairs. After they were all comfortable Maida began.
“Father says that this first week we can all rest. It’s to be our vacation, but after that, we’ve got to work. Father says that there are some things that every girl ought to know how to do and some things every boy ought to know. And we’re going to learn those things living in the Little House.”
Rosie’s eyes danced. “Hurry!” she urged Maida.