The Saturdays

In the story, the Melendy children are thrilled to be invited to spend their summer at Mrs. Oliphant’s personal lighthouse, her beautiful summer home on the coast. Because it belongs to Mrs. Oliphant and holds so much potential for new adventures, the lighthouse serves as a motif for the story’s theme of Finding the Unexpected in the Everyday.

The children’s trip to the lighthouse is an unlikely result of their budding friendship with Mrs. Oliphant, which all began with Randy’s Saturday adventure. Being an imaginative and artistic person, Randy is excited to spend her Saturday at the art gallery and revels in the French exhibition. When she first encounters Mrs. Oliphant there, she dreads seeing her neighbor and avoids talking to her: 

It was old Mrs. Oliphant (‘the Elephant,’ Rush called her behind her back) who really was old because she had known Father’s father way back in the last century. She was a big, tall old lady with a lot of furs that smelled of camphor, and a great many chains around her neck that got caught on each other (27). 

At this stage, Randy and her siblings know little about Mrs. Oliphant and judge her solely on her age and appearance.