"Thanks!"

She returned to her homework.

Margo put "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" on the record player and began another performance. Claire joined in on the animal sounds.

They were just finishing when I heard Mallory in the kitchen again.

"Homework's done," she announced. "Can I have a snack, Dawn?"

"Sure," I replied. "Claire and Margo and I will have one, too."

The four of us sat around the Pikes' kitchen, eating granola bars.

"So, Dawn," said Mallory, "how's your new-old house?"

Claire and Margo giggled. Mallory had christened our house "new-old," and the little girls think it's funny, but Mallory's right. I do live in a new-old house. It's new to Mom and Jeff and me, but it was built in 1795.1 love it, even though it's dark inside, and the stairway is narrow, and the doorways are low because people were a lot shorter in 1795.1 like to think that I live in a house that so many other people have lived in — people who saw the War of 1812 and the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gay Nineties and the first airplane and the Depression and the first rocketship. If s exciting.

I bet our house has a secret passageway somewhere. Maybe it was even part of the Underground Railroad. Mary Anne and I are going to explore it thoroughly one day. We'll tap on walls and press the wood paneling,

hoping for something to spring out or swing open. We plan to explore the attic, too. Maybe we'll find an old diary or something.

I smiled to myself, thinking that Mom would want to be in on a search of the house. She loves things like that. She thinks they're romantic, and Mom is a very romantic person. That's one reason Mr. Spier liked her so much when they were in high school. Guess what she did? She saved the rose tied with a white ribbon that he gave her the night of their senior prom. She pressed it between the pages of her yearbook. It's still there. Mary Anne and I found it.