Uncle Steve paused in the library where the others were, and said to his sister, “They’re the same Maynard children, Helen, if they are a year older.  We enjoyed Marjorie last summer, and I know we’ll enjoy Kitty this year,—­but how you can live with them all at once I can’t understand!”

“It’s habit,” said Mrs. Maynard, smiling, “you know, Steve, you can get used to ’most anything.”

“It seems to agree with you, Helen, at any rate,” said Grandma Sherwood, looking at her daughter’s pink cheeks and bright eyes.

Meanwhile, the younger Maynards had reached the kitchen, and were dancing round Eliza, with shouts of glee.

“Are you glad to see me again, Eliza?” asked Marjorie, flinging herself into the arms of the stout Irishwoman.

“Glad is it, Miss Midget?  Faith, I’m thot glad I kin hardly see ye fer gladness!  Ye’ve grow’d,—­but I do say not so much as I expicted!  But Masther King, now he’s as high as the church shpire!  And as fer Miss Kitty,—­arrah, but she’s the dumplin’ darlin’!  Stan’ out there now, Miss Kitty, an’ let me look at yez!  Och! but yer the foine gurrul!  An’ it’s ye thot’s comin’ to spend the summer.  My! but the toimes we’ll be havin’!”

It was a custom of the Maynards for one of the children to spend each summer at Grandma Sherwood’s, and as Marjorie had been there last year, it was now Kitty’s turn.

“Yes, I’m coming, Eliza,” she said, in her sedate way, “but I’m not going to stay now, you know; we’re all going on a tour.  But I’ll come back here the first of June, and stay a long time.”

“Any cookies, Eliza?” asked King, apropos of nothing.

“Cookies, is it?  There do be, indade!  But if yez be afther eatin’ thim now, ye’ll shpoil yer supper,—­thot ye will!  Here’s one a piece to ye, and now run away, and lave me do me worruk.  Be off with yez!”

After accepting a cookie apiece, the children bounced out the back door and down into the garden in search of Carter.

“We’ve come, Carter; we’ve come!” cried Marjorie, flinging open a door of the green-house in which Carter was busy potting some plants.

“You don’t say so, Miss Mischief!  Well, I’m right down glad to see you!  And is this Master King?  And Miss Kitty?  Well, you all grow like weeds after a rain, but I’ll warrant you’re as full of mischief as ever!”

“Kitty isn’t mischievous,” said Marjorie, who was proud of the sedate member of the family.

“And it’s Miss Kitty who’s to spend the summer, isn’t it?  Well, then, I won’t have the times I had last year, pulling children up from down the well,—­and picking them up with broken ankles after they slid down the roof!  Nothing of that sort, eh?” Carter’s eyes twinkled as he looked at Marjorie, who burst into laughter at reminiscences.

“No, nothing of that sort, Carter; but we’re all going to be here for a few days, and we’re going to give you the time of your life.  Will you take us out rowing in the boat?”