“Who put the little house in the tree?” Dicky asked. “My grandfather.” “Wasn’t it wonderful that they left the tree!” Laura commented. “Yes. You see my grandmother loved that big old tree dearly and so they saved it for her. Now where shall we go first?” “Up the tree!” everybody answered. “All right. I might have known you would have said that,” Maida declared, “when I’m just _dying_ to show you the house.” The tree grew out of the middle of the Annex. The floor had been fitted neatly about the tree-trunk. Stairs led up to the roof; and from the roof, a short flight of steps led to the Tree House. One after another the children mounted them. It took them into a little square room with windows looking in all four directions. “Oh I can see Spy Pond--I mean the Magic Mirror!” Rosie exclaimed. “And from here you can see the Big House,” Laura exclaimed. “Not very much--just a sort of shining....” “Oh--But--Look--See!” Dicky stuttered in his excitement. “From here you can see the ocean!” The children deserted the other windows and rushed to Dicky’s side. In the west appeared all a-sparkle what looked like a great heaving mass of melted glass. On and on it stretched, and on, until it cut through the vapory sky and disappeared forever. A few sail boats like great gulls were beating their wings on its glittering surface. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Rosie said in a solemn voice. “It makes me feel almost like not speaking.” “Wait until you see it in a nor’easter,” Maida promised, “or a great thunder storm.” “Just think,” Arthur said, “all my life I’ve wanted to learn to sail a boat--” “You will sometime,” Maida interrupted, “but father says we’ve all got to learn to swim before we can get into a sailboat.” “I know how to swim,” Arthur stated in an off-hand voice. “All boys do.” “I don’t,” Dicky remonstrated. “Well you will in a week,” Maida promised. Harold had all this time been keenly examining the ocean, the curving line of shore. “What’s that island off there, Maida?” he asked. “Everybody else calls it Spectacles Island, because it’s shaped like a pair of spectacles. But I call it Tom Tiddler’s Ground, because nobody lives there. I don’t see why I shouldn’t call it what I want. It’s _my_ island.” “Your island,” Rosie repeated. “Oh Maida, you lucky girl.” Maida flushed and looked ashamed. “I mean _our_ island,” she corrected herself. “Well,” Rosie said in a meditative tone, “with a farmhouse in the country, the ocean with an island in it in front of it; a forest with deer in back of it; and a pond--Maida can you think of anything else that we could possibly have?” “Well there might be a volcano on the island,” Maida suggested, “a grotto somewhere like the Blue Grotto of Capri; and then of course we have no glaciers, geysers, hot springs, deserts or bogs--” “Oh you goose!” Rosie interrupted. “You know we couldn’t have any of those things.” “We might have a cave,” Arthur said. “Are there any caves around here, Maida?”