The Happy Adventurers

Mollie Gordon, a London doctor's daughter and a keen Girl Guide, is packed off to her grandmother's in the country after measles leaves her eyes too weak for lessons, and faces a summer of doing nothing at all. Then the impossible journeys begin — while her twin brother Dick writes to her about strange experiences of his own, which his friend Outram is certain are ghosts. Lydia Miller Middleton wrote for girls of the Guide generation, and the invalid's boredom, the grandmother's memories of her own schooldays and Dick's letters are all done with a light, affectionate touch. Forty-four plates by painters including Mary Cassatt and Vilhelm Hammershøi capture the quiet interiors, gardens and window-lit rooms of Mollie's long summer, from 1839 to 1907.