The opening chapter, 'The Fourth Floor, East,' immediately establishes a tension between confinement and expanse. Happie Scollard complains that the family kitchen is 'eight feet wide' while the six sisters collectively occupy 'twelve feet'—a physical impossibility that sets up the central problem of space. The family's move to a farm in Crestville, Pennsylvania, is thus not merely a change of setting but a structural release from the cramped arithmetic of city life.

The Arithmetic of Confinement

The first chapter's dialogue hinges on a numerical joke: 'How can you get twelve feet into eight feet?' Happie's question is answered not by arithmetic but by relocation. The Scollard sisters are introduced in a space that literally cannot contain them, and the narrative's early momentum comes from the need to escape this squeeze. Bob's teasing response—'You'd have to be pretty poor in arithmetic to try it'—underscores the absurdity of their situation. The cramped kitchen becomes a recurring reference point against which the later, open fields are measured.

The Ark as a Recurring Image

The farmhouse is repeatedly called 'the Ark,' a biblical allusion that carries multiple meanings: a vessel of refuge, a collection of pairs, and a structure adrift. The narrator notes that 'it always surprised the inmates of the Ark that there was, apparently, no inequality of age in Crestville.' This observation links the Ark to a community where everyone knows everyone else 'with the intimacy of first names and identical ages.' The image recurs in chapter titles like 'An Ark Adrift?' and 'The Promise of the Green Branch,' reinforcing the sense of a family navigating uncertain waters.

Movement Between Indoor and Outdoor Scenes

The narrative shifts deliberately from interior to exterior. Early chapters are set in the cramped city apartment; later scenes unfold in hayfields and farmyards. In the hay-loading episode, Gretta's physical competence is contrasted with Happie's inexperience. Gretta 'swung herself up on the back of the hay wagon' and 'took command of the work' with a pitchfork, while Happie 'forgot to work, drinking in a new experience.' The movement is not just geographical but sensory: from the 'squeedged' kitchen to the 'delicious hay in the June sunshine.'

Gretta as a Figure of Competence

Gretta's hay-loading performance is described with unusual precision: she 'caught the great bunches of hay,' 'wielding her fork surely and gracefully,' and 'judging accurately and quickly where to place each forkful to keep the load symmetrical.' Bob, exhausted, admits she has beaten him. The scene reverses expected gender roles—Gretta works 'as well as any boy could have done'—and her skill is presented as a form of artistry. The narrator lingers on her 'brown arms,' 'tall figure,' and 'proud pleasure,' making her a central figure in the book's celebration of rural life.

Readers attentive to structure will notice how Taggart uses physical spaces—the cramped city kitchen, the Ark farmhouse, the open hayfield—to chart the sisters' adjustment. The recurring image of the Ark, with its biblical overtones of survival and renewal, gives the story a coherent symbolic framework. The excerpts suggest that the book rewards attention to these patterns of confinement and release, indoor and outdoor, rather than to plot alone.