This is a children’s book that was read to us in class during the mid-1970s, but I felt it was from an earlier era. A family moves to the country, moves into a big, old, dusty, neglected house. There is a solid wood table that they sand and polish with linseed oil. I think there is a scene where the children explore a sealed-off hallway by climbing in through an outdoors upstairs window. I think one of the kids has some chocolate with them and they eat it and they are very thirsty but there is no water, but they quench their thirst by leaning their head out the window and drinking rainwater from a busted downspout. Maybe in the same book they find some old jewelry in a secret compartment behind a medicine cabinet?
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
I wonder if it is GO TO THE ROOM OF THE EYES by Betty K. Erwin. It was an old house, big family, the children find the clues for a treasure hunt that previous children occupying the house had left. It’s been a while since I read it, but some details are that there was a stuffed gingerbread doll in the story and a hidden room full of toys.
Sounds like ‘The Four-Storey Mistake’ by Elizabeth Enright, although the jewellery behind the medicine cabinet could be from ‘Return To Gone-Away’; also by her.
This sounds like Elizabeth Enright’s Return to Gone-Away, her sequel to Gone-Away Lake.
Possibly Elizabeth Enright: The Four Storey Mistake?
Perhaps “Return to Gone-Away” by Elizabeth Enright?
Sounds like it could be The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright.
Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright. Portia and Foster Blake’s parents purchase the Villa Caprice house near Gone-Away Lake. This house was once the summer house of a wealthy woman, Mrs. Brace-Gideon. There was a rumor that her jewelery and other precious items were hidden in the house. The Blake’s fix up the house and find antique furniture in the attic which they use to furnish the house and sell to fix up the interior. Portia and Foster’s cousin, Julian, joins them on adventures with elderly residents, Aunt Minnehaha and Uncle Pin. The boys spend the night in a haunted house. They claim the attic in another abandoned house as their clubhouse. They eventually find Mrs. Brace-Gideon’s safe in the bathroom behind the medicine cabinet. They had found the combination to the safe in the helmet of the suit of armor.
“Return to Gone-Away” by Elizabeth Enright is almost certainly the right answer! I thought my clues were impossibly vague; I wasn’t even sure they were all in the same book! Thank you, Irene, for your detailed reply. You people are amazing!