"Let's tell Dora about the magic door; perhaps she would like to help!" said Louise, as she and Bess went upstairs to bed.
CHAPTER VII.[ToC]
IKEY'S ACCIDENT.
The days grew shorter and cooler, the leaves began to flutter down, and each morning, from her sitting-room window, Miss Brown watched the children start for school.
First the little girls, tossing good-by kisses to Aunt Zélie, ran down the walk to join Dora or Elsie; then a few minutes later Ikey was at the gate whistling for Carl. In the five months since Ikey had come to stay with his grandparents the boys had become almost inseparable.
Dr. Isaac Clinton Ford was a surgeon in the navy, and having been ordered to the Mediterranean, his wife, whose health was not good, followed him, with their little daughter, while young Isaac was sent to his father's old home. Warmly attached to it himself, Dr. Ford could think of no better place for his son, and old Mr. and Mrs. Ford felt that it would be almost like having their boy again, from whom they had had only brief visits for eighteen years.
Unfortunately, neither took into account that young Isaac was totally unlike the quiet, studious boy his father had been. It was a question which suffered most during those first weeks, the elderly people whose lives had moved on like clockwork for so many years, or the mischievous, fun-loving boy suddenly introduced into their household.