The four-story mistake

I'm rereading these books from my childhood to pick up what I might have lost. This one and [b:The Saturdays|5019|The Saturdays (The Melendy Family, #1)|Elizabeth Enright|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386922636l/5019.SY75.jpg|752200] I had checked out from the library a convenient two blocks from our house while I was in grade school. This one I remember less well than the first volume, however, all except for the house of the title out in the country somewhere outside of New York with its cupola. It was written in the middle of World War II, an almost imaginably long time ago for me as a kid, and yet I would still see strongly recognizable features in the characterization of the children of the Melendy family. They have their very own floor in the odd house, with a secret room, and go on adventures out in nature and the little nearby town. It's all very cozy, even though there's a bike accident, pneumonia, and a large alligator featured, there is no loss of life, not even a hint of this transmitted back from the far-off theaters of war at the time. The children quarrel but stick together, they grow up, but just little by little. No one is mean to them except for one classmate who looks down on art. I do remember that comforting haze from the book when I read it as a youth, which I now has taking place as far back from the present day as the nineteenth century was from when I was the characters' ages. The audiobook narration kept the old-fashioned tone in a charming way too.

I have the third quartet novel in hardcover, too, one I didn't get to all those years ago, I think, which I'll read soon.