Janet found this one for me, and it was the first of the series that I read. The story returns to Roger, Ann, Jane, and Mark from the second book. This time, a grumpy garden toad tells them of the magical powers of thyme. The magic takes the quartet back to the American Revolution, the time of American slavery, and an encounter with their own mothers and uncles (which we’ve already seen from the older generation’s point of view in the third book). There’s also a cameo by the children from E. Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet.
Because what if it did happen like that, and the young Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha came back with them to modern times? He could think of two ways it might work out. They might take the place of their grown-up selves, and there wouldn’t be any grown-up Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha any more, and that would be awful. Because nice as the small Martha was, as a parent she just wouldn’t do.

Or else there Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha would be, and there their grown-up selves would be, too, and they might bump right into each other. And that would be like those horror stories where people go walking down long hallways and meet themselves coming in the other direction. And everybody goes mad in the end, and no wonder!

Variants

(1)
  1. The Time Garden by Edward Eager (Harcourt,Brace, April 1958).
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Edward Eager