“This is my room,” Maida said, pointing to one of the south chambers--the back room on the right of the stairs. “I have always slept there when we have been in the house. I love it because of the great tree outside my window. I have always called this tree, Mother Nature, to go with Father Time. So you see I have a father tree and a mother tree! When there’s a storm the boughs make such a sweet sound rubbing against my walls. And often little twigs tap on my window, and sometimes it sounds exactly as though the leaves were whispering to me.” “Oh Maida!” Rosie exclaimed, “I never saw anything so lovely in all my life. How I love that bed and that sweet little cricket.” The room was simple--it held but a big, double, old-fashioned canopied bed; an old-fashioned maple bureau; and an old-fashioned maple desk; a little straight slat-backed chair in front of the desk and a little slat-backed rocker by one of the windows--but it was quaint. In front of the rocker was a cricket as though just ready for little feet. The flowered wall-paper matched the chintz curtains and the chintz ruffles on the little cricket. Under the window, in a little old-fashioned child’s chair, sat a great rag doll, and beside her was a little hair-cloth trunk. “Yes, it _is_ perfectly lovely,” Laura agreed, “but oh Maida, do show me my room.” “What a selfish goop I am!” Maida exclaimed in contrition. “Your room, Rosie, is in front of mine, and Laura’s across the hall.” The three little girls tumbled pell-mell into the front room. It did not differ much from Maida’s or from Laura’s across the way--except where the key-note of Maida’s wall-paper and chintzes were yellow, that of Rosie’s was crimson and Laura’s blue. In each there was a double canopied bed; a little old-fashioned bureau; a little old-fashioned cricket; two quaint little old-fashioned chairs. But all these things differed in detail and although the rooms showed a similarity, they also showed an individuality. Rosie and Laura went wild with excitement. “Oh look at my sweet, _sweet_ closet!” Laura called from her room. “What a queer shape with the roof slanting like that. And a baby window in it!” “And the windows,” Rosie took it up from her room, “four, eight, twelve, sixteen, _twenty-four panes_! And such queer glass; all full of bubbles and crinkles and wiggle-waggles!” And the beaming Maida, running frantically from the one room to the other and from the other to the one, was saying, “Yes, aren’t they lovely little closets--running under the eaves like that? I am so glad you like them. I was afraid you would think they were queer. Yes, that’s old old glass. All the window glass in the house is old and some of it is such a lovely color.”