“It beats all how clever that old lady was!” said Mr. Griggs. “I never saw anything like this before. She must ’a’ got some electrician down from the city to fix this up for her. We don’t do that kind of job in Crowfield.” “Do you suppose there are any more such things about the house?” inquired Mrs. Corliss anxiously. “I’ll take a look,” said Mr. Griggs. “But I mightn’t find ’em, even so.” And he did not find them; Aunt Nan had her secrets carefully concealed. But for weeks the family were continually discovering strange new surprises in their housekeeping. That very night at supper, just after Mr. Griggs had left the house with his kit of tools, a queer thing happened. They were sitting about the round dining-table, the center of which, as they had noticed from the first, seemed to be a separate inlaid circle of wood. In the middle of this Mary had set a pretty vase of flowers--nasturtiums, mignonette, marigolds, and yellow poppies, the last lingerers in their garden. They were talking about their first day in Crowfield, about the visit of Katy Summers, and the funny things that had happened to their first caller; and they were all laughing merrily over Mary’s description of how Katy had looked when she went riding out toward the door in the inhospitable chair. Dr. Corliss had just reached out his hand for the sugar. Suddenly the table center began slowly to revolve, and the sugar bowl retreated from his hand as if by magic. “Well, I never!” said the Doctor. “This is a new kind of butler’s assistant!” “It makes me feel like Alice in Wonderland!” exclaimed Mary. “It is the Mad Hatter’s breakfast; only instead of every one’s moving on one place, the place moves on by itself!” They found that Mary had hit her knee by accident against a spring concealed under the table. “Aunt Nan lived here all alone,” said Mrs. Corliss, “and I dare say she found this an easy way to pass things to herself when she was eating her lonely meals.” “Let’s keep it like this,” said Mary. “Now I shan’t be needing always to ask John to pass the salt.” “I don’t think it’s fair!” protested John. “Now, Mary has the seat by the button, and she can make the table turn when she likes. I wish I had a button, too.” “You’d keep the table whirling all the time, John,” laughed his father. “No, it is better as it is. We chose our seats this way, before we knew about the lively center-piece. Let’s stick to what chance gave us. Aunt Nan’s house seems to be a kind of good-luck game, doesn’t it?”