Next they went upstairs to a big playroom which covered the whole top of the house.  Shelves covered with books and toys lined the walls.  A fire, burning in the big fireplace, made it very cheerful.

“Oh, what a darling doll-house,” Maida exclaimed, pausing before the miniature mansion, very elegantly furnished.

“Oh, do you like it?” Laura beamed with pride.

“I just love it!  Particularly because it’s so little.”

“Little!” Laura bristled.  “I don’t think it’s so very little.  It’s the biggest doll-house I ever saw.  Did you ever see a bigger one?”

Maida looked embarrassed.  “Only one.”

“Whose was it?”

“It was the one my father had built for me at Pride’s.  It was too big to be a doll’s house.  It was really a small cottage.  There were four rooms—­two upstairs and two downstairs and a staircase that you could really walk up.  But I don’t like it half so well as this one,” Maida went on truthfully.  “I think it’s very queer but, somehow, the smaller things are the better I like them.  I guess it’s because I’ve seen so many big things.”

Laura looked impressed and puzzled at the same time.  “And you really could walk up the stairs?  Let’s go up in the cupola,” she suggested, after an uncertain interval in which she seemed to think of nothing else to show.

The stairs at the end of the playroom led into the cupola.  Maida exclaimed with delight over the view which she saw from the windows.  On one side was the river with the draw-bridge, the Navy Yard and the monument on Bunker Hill.  On the other stretched the smoky expanse of Boston with the golden dome of the state house gleaming in the midst of a huge, red-brick huddle.

“Did you have a cupola at Pride’s Crossing?” Laura asked triumphantly.

“Oh, no—­how I wish I had!”

Laura beamed again.

“Laura likes to have things other people haven’t,” Maida thought.

Her hostess now conducted her back over the two flights of stairs to the lower floor.  They went into the dining-room, which was all shining oak and glittering cut-glass; into the parlor, which was filled with gold furniture, puffily upholstered in blue brocade; into the libraries, which Maida liked best of all, because there were so many books and—­

“Oh, oh, oh!” she exclaimed, stopping before one of the pictures; “that’s Santa Maria in Cosmedin.  I haven’t seen that since I left Rome.”

“How long did you stay in Rome, little girl?” a voice asked back of her.  Maida turned.  Mrs. Lathrop had come into the room.

Maida arose immediately from her chair.  “We stayed in Rome two months,” she said.

“Indeed.  And where else did you go?”

“London, Paris, Florence and Venice.”

“Do you know these other pictures?” Mrs. Lathrop asked.  “I’ve been collecting photographs of Italian churches.”