The queer little man

"The queer little man" by Marion Ames Taggart is a children's novel written in the early 20th century. Set in the small town of Greenacres, it follows four close friends—Mark Hawthorne, Isabel Lindsay, Prudence “Prue” Wayne, and fiery Poppy Meiggs—as they form a club, claim a “club room,” and throw themselves into home-made projects, woodland play, and gardening around the Hawthorne estate. Warm family bonds, a secret passage, and a gift horse named Hurrah color their days, while an unsettling legal threat to the Hawthornes’ home and fortune looms in the background. The opening of the story introduces the quartet on their “Opening Day,” when they claim an unused room as club headquarters and dream up adventures without a fixed plan. Their attempt to build furniture from packing cases falters, but they furnish the room with attic cast-offs from Isabel’s and Prue’s families. Poppy is swept into rapture when the kindly postmaster, Mr. Babcock, gives her an elderly but spirited horse and buckboard, Hurrah. Meanwhile, Mr. Hawthorne receives troubling word that Maurice Ditson is contesting the inheritance that restored the family home, a cloud that the children meet with loyalty and bravado. The friends christen themselves “the Lucky Four,” visit their pine-tree platform “Château Branche,” start individual garden plots, and cautiously allow two schoolmates, Kathie and Dolly, partial membership—stashing Kathie’s old coin collection as “buried treasure” in the house’s secret passage—while the threat to the beloved Hawthorne place quietly gathers.

The queer little man, by Marion Ames Taggart. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #78419.