“I guess so,” I said thoughtfully. It would have been tactless to have pointed out that this included the three of them.

“I want to see the soldiers,” said Zebediah and went running toward the military road.

“Hey, come back here,” I screamed.

We ran after him, and Wilfred, reaching out an arm, grabbed Zebediah’s shirt collar and yanked him back the way you would a dog on a leash.

“Stop it, you idiot! You’re going to get lost,” said Winifred.

“He never gets lost,” said Wilfred.

“Yes, actually, that’s true,” said Winifred. “But it’s still rude to run off uninvited on someone else’s property.”

Zebediah didn’t seem to mind. It was my guess that he was used to being yanked back by his collar and that the idea of an invitation first meant nothing to him.

Then I showed them all the beaches and coves, and before we knew it Sina had rung the dinner bell. She had installed this years before, as Old Tom and I were apt to be anywhere on the property and she didn’t like yelling herself hoarse when dinner was ready.

We sat around the kitchen table eating Sina’s tuna casserole, which was one of about six things she knew how to make. She had a limited but tasty repertoire. Sina’s eyes kept darting from one child to the next nervously, and she later confessed to me as we did the dishes together and the Maddens took baths and unpacked that she expected one or the other of them to burst into wild sobs at any moment.

“You know,” she said, “I figure nature or nurture, they had it coming and going, and surely one was bound to have caught it. The melancholic hysteria.”

“No, they seem really like quite reasonable human beings,” I said. “Zebediah is a bit twitchy.”

“All little boys are twitchy,” said Sina. “That is, if they’re getting enough to eat and so have normal boy energy. I suspect all the poor starving little boys in war-torn Europe have lost their twitch, and what a sad thing that must be. But given enough food, that’s what happens to a boy’s energy. It all goes into the twitch. Feed them, they twitch. Do you think the children are getting enough food? I’ve never cooked for six. You don’t suppose they’re going to expect three meals a day, do you? I mean cooked? Should I hire a cook? You know what, I think Mrs. Brookman said her niece was staying with her and looking for employment. I’ll ask when we get there tomorrow. It’s very hard to be an artist and a domestic at the same time.”

I was quite excited at this prospect. Sina was a good cook, but there was a certain sameness to what we ate. I had read a lot of Victorian English novels as well as spending many hammock summers skimming ancient issues of Woman’s Home Companion that I had found in a box in the root cellar. Through them, I associated cooks with large households where there were eighteen-course dinners with pheasants and puddings and dishes with intriguing names like bubble and squeak. Where every meal was an adventure. I liked the idea of a cook and hoped the niece was at least fat; it was clear she wouldn’t be old if she was Mrs. Brookman’s niece. But cooks in Victorian novels and the stories in Woman’s Home Companion were always fat and old and unattractive and so devoted entirely to their kitchens. I saw puff pastry swans and Baked Alaska and other dishes that were redolent of magic coming my way. Then something dreadful occurred to me.