Arthur flushed, remained silent. Mr. Westabrook continued to look at him. And now his look was a question. “Twice--” Arthur faltered finally--“when the moon was full. I wanted to see if I could come up to some of your deer.” “Well, did you manage?” Mr. Westabrook asked. “Only once,” Arthur answered. “If they get the smell of you--good night! But I read in a book here in the library how to work around so’s the wind wouldn’t carry it--and one night, I watched a group feeding and tossing their horns nearly five minutes.” “It’s a pretty sight,” Mr. Westabrook remarked. “I guess if I were a boy I couldn’t resist that myself. But I want you to promise me that you’ll make these explorations only the three nights that the moon is full.” Arthur promised readily. “Oh father,” Maida begged, “couldn’t I do it too?” Her father shook his head. “No I guess you little girls must stay in your beds. Yes you too Dicky,” as Dicky’s lips opened automatically, “and you Harold. Sometime perhaps but not now. Arthur is older and bigger. He can take care of himself. Now,” he concluded quickly as if determined to give envy no time to develop, “come out into the barn. I hear there’s some good boxing going on here. Besides I want you to show me how your tennis is improving.” The Little Six continued to play near or in the house directly under Granny Flynn’s or Mrs. Dore’s watchful eye. Occasionally they were permitted to wade in the lake, but only when one of the grown-ups accompanied them. For the most of their time, they were contented to frequent Home Rock. Maida had told the Little Six that there were toys awaiting them in the Little House. These included dolls of all sizes; doll furniture; little sets of dishes, china and pewter. Granny eked these out with the store of saucerless cups and cupless saucers, the cracked bowls and plates which linger on the outskirts of all respectable china closets. The children were permitted to carry pails of water over to House Rock and there, in its shade, miniature housekeeping began. From every level, glassy-eyed dolls, sitting placidly in little chairs, or lying placidly in little beds, surveyed the landscape. Every morning the small mothers burst into an orgy of house-cleaning, sweeping rock rooms, dusting doll furniture, washing doll dishes. Every afternoon, there broke out a fury of baking. Hundreds of delicious mud pies were mixed, baked and then abandoned to that limbo, to which all mud pies are sooner or later consigned. When this play gave out, the ingenious Mrs. Dore set them to cutting out paper dolls; and to making, in scrap-books hastily improvised from brown paper, innumerable rooms, furnished with advertisement furniture, cut from magazines. This involved endless hours of cutting in which scissors disappeared as though by witchcraft and reappeared as though by magic; endless hours of pasting from which the small interior decorators returned splashed with flour paste from head to foot.