"I dislike oak furniture." Mrs. Stratford did not answer the question that Martine had put indirectly to her. Her attention was now centred on the ugly extension table and the uncomfortable chairs ranged stiffly around the wall. "We'll have to put up with the chairs, I suppose, but I have a lovely old blue cotton curtain in one of the trunks that will hide the table and give the room any amount of style." "You are trying to make the best of everything, my dear, and I dare say you are right. But the house is so much smaller and plainer than I remembered it, that I fear we shall hardly be comfortable." "Oh, no; come, let me show you, already I have made ever so many plans;" and impressed by Martine's vivacious optimism, Mrs. Stratford at last began to see the pleasanter possibilities of the red cottage. Martine was not deceiving either her mother or herself in pointing out the best side of things, and yet in her heart there was a certain disappointment in her first survey of "Red Knoll." "We must have a name for the house," she had said the very afternoon of their arrival. "'Red Farm,' no, that isn't exactly the thing; 'Red Top,' no, the roof isn't red, and besides, that name has been used by some one else. 'Red Knoll'--there, why not, it combines the color of the house and the situation on a knoll--why not, mamma?" and as Mrs. Stratford had no adverse answer, Red Knoll it was from the beginning. A house needs something besides a picturesque name to make it attractive even to an optimistic girl anxious to see the bright side of things. The little farm-house that Mr. and Mrs. Stratford had so impulsively bought, was barely large enough for the three persons who were now to make it the summer home. The two square rooms on each side of the front door, if thrown together, would have been smaller than the bedroom which had been Martine's in her father's house. Over them, originally, had been two rooms of equal size. One of these was now to be Mrs. Stratford's bedroom. The other had been divided by a partition into two rooms each, resembling the so-called hall bedroom of many city houses. The one nearest her mother Martine appropriated for herself. The second she named euphemistically the guest-room; but for the present she intended to use it as a studio or writing-room, and had removed one or two other pieces of furniture to make room for a large deal table. Beyond this room, connected by a narrow door, were two ell rooms, one of which was assigned to Angelina. Downstairs in the ell were kitchen and wash-room, both with white-washed walls. "A small house, but our own," said Martine cheerfully, as she first walked through it. "I'll try to forget how different it is from the place we used to have at Oconomowoc. When father first sold it, he said some time he would buy a place on the New England coast, but he certainly hadn't Red Knoll in mind then."