A quiet town, Lake City, with an atmosphere that might well belong to New England,—­beauty, culture, leisure, are its hallmarks.

Fifteen years ago half a mile inland from the lake was an empty block that once had been a farm pasture.  Three fine old oaks stood with tops together in the center of the block.  The grass was still firm and green and thick in the ancient pasture except for narrow trails worn by children’s feet.  To the initiated each trail told its own story.  There was a hollow square that formed the baseball diamond.  There was a straight, short cut that led to the little cress-grown spring.  There were the parallel lines for “Come-Come Pull Away,” and there were numerous bald spots, the center of little radiating trails where, in the fall, each group of children had its complicated roasting oven in which potatoes and “weenies” were cooked.

On one August afternoon the pasture seemed deserted.  It was circus day and the children of the surrounding blocks had all by one method or another won admission to the big tent on the hill east of the town.

Yet not quite all the children.  For under one of the oak trees was a baby carriage in which a little girl of two lay fast asleep.  And far above her, perched lightly but firmly in a swaying fork of the oak, was a long-legged little girl of twelve.  She sat where she could peer easily down on her small sleeping sister, yet high enough to be completely hidden from casual view.  She was a thin youngster, with short curling hair of a dusty yellow.  The curly hair did not hide the fine square head, a noble head for so small a girl, set well on the little square shoulders.  Her eyes were blue and black lashed, her nose nondescript, her mouth large, her chin square and her little jaw line long and pronounced.  She wore a soiled sailor suit of blue galatea.  Caught in the crotch of two opposite branches was a doll almost as large as the sleeping child below.  It was a queer old-fashioned doll, with a huge china head, that displayed brilliant black hair and eyes as blue as those of her little mistress.  The doll wore a clumsily made sailor suit of blue calico, which evidently had been washed recently, but not ironed.  It is necessary to meet the doll properly, for she was an intimate and important member of the little girl’s family.  Her name was Florence Dombey.

A battered red book lay in Florence Dombey’s lap.  It was called, “With Clive in India.”  It was written by G. A. Henty and told of the marvelous and hair-breadth adventures of an English lad in an Indian campaign.

Florence Dombey’s attention, however, was not on the book.  It was riveted, hectically, on her mistress, who with her tongue caught between her lips was deftly whittling a cigar box cover into doll furniture, of a scale so tiny that even had Florence Dombey had a doll of her own, it could not have hoped to use the furniture.

It was very quiet in the oak tree.  The little furniture-maker spoke softly to Florence Dombey occasionally, but otherwise crickets and locusts made the only sounds on the summer air.