“Father wants you all to come to spend the summer with us at Satuit. He’s going to do the most beautiful thing you ever heard of in your life. Just as he gave me Maida’s Little Shop, he is going to give me Maida’s Little House. _He_ is going to live in the Big House where he can have all the grown-up company he wants and _we_ are going to live in the Little House. The Little House is so far away from the Big House that nobody would ever guess we were there. Oh, but it’s all so beautiful and there are so many things to tell about it that I don’t know where to begin. For one thing he’s going to let us all help in-- We girls are to do our part in the--And the boys are to take care of the-- Oh it is such a duck of a house! Built very near a great big pond and not so very far off--the ocean. And there’s a wood and House Rock and the Bosky Dingle ... and.... Oh, I don’t know how to tell you about it....” She stopped for breath. The horn came nearer and nearer. The five faces stared at her. For one astounded instant nobody could speak. “Oh Maida!” at last Rosie breathed. The two girls threw themselves upon her; Arthur rose and then suddenly sat down again but Dicky kept quite still his eyes full of stars. “I knew you’d have some plan, Maida,” he said. Harold, unexpectedly, turned a somersault. “I know I’m dreaming,” Laura almost whispered. The horn stopped. A great gray car turned into Primrose Court. A man, middle-aged, tall, massive and with a pronounced stoop to his shoulders, stepped out. He turned a head, big and shaggy as a buffalo, in the direction of Maida’s Little Shop. The piercing eyes, fierce and keen as an eagle’s, seemed to penetrate its very walls. This was Jerome Westabrook whom the world called, “Buffalo” Westabrook. Maida dashed out of the yard, the children trailing her. “Oh father, father, I’ve told them, I’ve told them! I couldn’t keep it any longer after I heard the horn.” CHAPTER III THE JOURNEY As the train drew into the Satuit Station, it seemed to spill children from every door. Counting them carefully, Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore found to their great relief that the twelve, with whom they started, were still all with them. But--big and little--they were all so full of the excitement of the trip that it looked as though, at any moment, they might vanish in the strange country which surrounded them. Arthur, leading the two boys, started an investigation of the station. The three big girls followed. Only the little children, tired by the trip and awed to quiet by the unfamiliar surroundings, stayed close to the women’s skirts. Timmie’s big full eyes surveyed in wonder the strange new world. Delia, who had fallen comfortably asleep in her mother’s arms, suddenly waked up, rubbing her eyes, and looked about her. “Oh take me back to Shalstown!” she wailed in a sudden attack of homesickness and fortunately fell asleep again. “Oh here’s the car!” Maida called.