By way of reply Katy opened the book and began.
The three boys made a bolt to investigate and soon swarmed up on the roof with Jane close behind.
The old white house with its big front porch and green blinds was a notable one. Built upon a terrace, it stood several feet above the tree-shaded lawns about it. A group of old apple trees crowded close up to the windows at the side and rear. Both the western and southern gables were overhung with great wistaria vines, so old the stems were like huge cables and could easily bear a man’s weight, as the children’s grown brother Frank had already discovered. He had been locked out one night, and wishing to get in without disturbing the family, had quietly gone up the vines, hand-over-hand, to his own window.
The old house boasted many gables and more dormer windows, each bedroom having one or more. The children found these little nooks cosy places to play and read, indeed only a little less fascinating than the great rambling closets which were only partly enclosed and seemed to end, no one knew where, off under the roof. They had never been able to fully explore these—indeed their mother had not encouraged such voyages of discovery, because there were sundry narrow places, dark and dusty, where wriggling through in snake-fashion wrought havoc with their clothes.
The children were on the roof of the low kitchen, a kitchen that had apparently been an afterthought, for the roof sloped both ways like an inverted V and had no connection with the main roof.
“I tell you what, boys,” said Ernest after they had explored it to their satisfaction, “let’s play the ‘Siege of Acre.’ We could use this roof for the tower.”
“Aren’t enough of us!” objected Carol, a big, handsome boy with tight blond curls who was inclined to be lazy.
“Can’t we play, too?” put in Chicken Little.
“Shucks, girls don’t know how to fight.”