If you had gone into the little shop the next day, you would have
seen a very pretty picture.
First of all, I think you would have noticed the little girl who sat
behind the counter—a little girl in a simple blue-serge dress and a
fresh white “tire”—a little girl with shining excited eyes and
masses of pale-gold hair, clinging in tendrilly rings about a thin,
heart-shaped face—a little girl who kept saying as she turned round
and round in her swivel-chair:
“Oh, Granny, do you think _anybody’s_ going to buy _anything_
to-day?”
Next I think you would have noticed an old woman who kept coming to
the living-room door—an old woman in a black gown and a white apron
so stiffly starched that it rattled when it touched anything—an old
woman with twinkling blue eyes and hair, enclosing, as in a silver
frame, a little carved nut of a face—an old woman who kept soothing
the little girl with a cheery:
“Now joost you be patient, my lamb, sure somebody’ll be here soon.”
The shop was unchanged since yesterday, except for a big bowl of
asters, red, white and blue.
“Three cheers for the red, white and blue,” Maida sang when she
arranged them. She had been singing at intervals ever since.
Suddenly the latch slipped. The bell rang.
Maida jumped. Then she sat so still in her high chair that you would
have thought she had turned to stone. But her eyes, glued to the
moving door, had a look as if she did not know what to expect.
The door swung wide. A young man entered. It was Billy Potter.
He walked over to the show case, his hat in his hand. And all the
time he looked Maida straight in the eye. But you would have thought
he had never seen her before.
“Please, mum,” he asked humbly, “do you sell fairy-tales here?”
Maida saw at once that it was one of Billy’s games. She had to bite
her lips to keep from laughing. “Yes,” she said, when she had made
her mouth quite firm. “How much do you want to pay for them?”
“Not more than a penny each, mum,” he replied.
Maida took out of a drawer the pamphlet-tales that Billy had liked
so much.
“Are these what you want?” she asked. But before he could answer,
she added in a condescending tone, “Do you know how to read, little
boy?”
Billy’s face twitched suddenly and his eyes “skrinkled up.” Maida
saw with a mischievous delight that he, in his turn, was trying to
keep the laughter back.
“Yes, mum,” he said, making his face quite serious again. “My
teacher says I’m the best reader in the room.”
He took up the little books and looked them over. “‘The Three
Boars’—no,‘Bears,’” he corrected himself. “‘Puss-in-Boats’—no,
‘Boots’; ‘Jack-and-the-Bean-Scalp’—no,‘Stalk’; ‘Jack the
Joint-Cooler’—no, ‘Giant-Killer’; ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Bluebird’—no,
‘Bluebeard’; ‘Little Toody-Goo-Shoes’—no, ‘Little Goody-Two-Shoes’;
‘Tom Thumb,’ ‘The Sweeping Beauty,’—no, ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ ‘The
Babes in the Wood.’ I guess I’ll take these ten, mum.”
He felt in all his pockets, one after another. After a long time, he
brought out some pennies, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, ten,” he counted slowly.
He took the books, turned and left the shop. Maida watched him in
astonishment. Was he really going for good?
In a few minutes the little bell tinkled a second time and there
stood Billy again.
“Good morning, Petronilla,” he said pleasantly, as if he had not
seen her before that morning, “How’s business?”
“Fine!” Maida responded promptly. “I’ve just sold ten fairy books to
the funniest little boy you ever saw.”
“My stars and garters!” Billy exclaimed. “Business surely is brisk.
Keep that up and you can afford to have a cat. I’ve brought you
something.”
He opened the bag he carried and took a box out from it. “Hold out
your two hands,—it’s heavy,” he warned.
In spite of his preparation, the box nearly fell to the floor—it was
so much heavier than Maida expected. “What can be in it?” she cried
excitedly. She pulled the cover off—then murmured a little “oh!” of
delight.
The box was full—cram-jam full—of pennies; pennies so new that they
looked like gold—pennies so many that they looked like a fortune.
“Gracious, what pretty money!” Maida exclaimed. “There must be a
million here.”
“Five hundred,” Billy corrected her.
He put some tiny cylindrical rolls of paper on the counter. Maida
handled them curiously—they, too, were heavy.
“Open them,” Billy commanded.
Maida pulled the papers away from the tops. Bright new dimes fell
out of one, bright new nickels came from the other.
“Oh, I’m so glad to have nice clean money,” Maida said in a
satisfied tone. She emptied the money drawer and filled its pockets
with the shining coins. “It was very kind of you to think of it,
Billy. I know it will please the children.” The thought made her
eyes sparkle.
The bell rang again. Billy went out to talk with Granny, leaving
Maida alone to cope with her first strange customer.
Again her heart began to jump into her throat. Her mouth felt dry on
the inside. She watched the door, fascinated.
On the threshold two little girls were standing. They were exactly
of the same size, they were dressed in exactly the same way, their
faces were as alike as two peas in a pod. Maida saw at once that
they were twins. They had little round, chubby bodies, bulging out
of red sweaters; little round, chubby faces, emerging from tall,
peaky, red-worsted caps. They had big round eyes as expressionless
as glass beads and big round golden curls as stiff as candles. They
stared so hard at Maida that she began to wonder nervously if her
face were dirty.
“Come in, little girls,” she called.
The little girls pattered over to the show case and looked in. But
their big round eyes, instead of examining the candy, kept peering
up through the glass top at Maida. And Maida kept peering down
through it at them.
“I want to buy some candy for a cent,” one of them whispered in a
timid little voice.
“I want to buy some candy for a cent, too,” the other whispered in a
voice, even more timid.
“All the cent candy is in this case,” Maida explained, smiling.
“What are you going to have, Dorothy?” one of them asked.
“I don’t know. What are you going to have, Mabel?” the other
answered. They discussed everything in the one-cent case. Always
they talked in whispers. And they continued to look more often at
Maida than at the candy.
“Have you anything two-for-a-cent?” Mabel whispered finally.
“Oh, yes—all the candy in this corner.”
The two little girls studied the corner Maida indicated. For two or
three moments they whispered together. At one point, it looked as if
they would each buy a long stick of peppermint, at another, a paper
of lozenges. But they changed their minds a great many times. And in
the end, Dorothy bought two large pickles and Mabel bought two large
chocolates. Maida saw them swapping their purchases as they went
out.
The two pennies which the twins handed her were still moist from the
hot little hands that had held them. Maida dropped them into an
empty pocket in the money drawer. She felt as if she wanted to keep
her first earnings forever. It seemed to her that she had never seen
such _precious-looking_ money. The gold eagles which her father had
given her at Christmas and on her birthday did not seem half so
valuable.
But she did not have much time to think of all this. The bell rang
again. This time it was a boy—a big fellow of about fourteen, she
guessed, an untidy-looking boy with large, intent black eyes. A mass
of black hair, which surely had not been combed, fell about a face
that as certainly had not been washed that morning.
“Give me one of those blue tops in the window,” he said gruffly. He
did not add these words but his manner seemed to say, “And be quick
about it!” He threw his money down on the counter so hard that one
of the pennies spun off into a corner.
He did not offer to pick the penny up. He did not even apologize.
And he looked very carefully at the top Maida handed him as if he
expected her to cheat him. Then he walked out.
It was getting towards school-time. Children seemed to spring up
everywhere as if they grew out of the ground. The quiet streets
began to ring with the cries of boys playing tag, leap frog and
prisoners’ base. The little girls, much more quiet, squatted in
groups on doorsteps or walked slowly up and down, arm-in-arm. But
Maida had little time to watch this picture. The bell was ringing
every minute now. Once there were six children in the little shop
together.
“Do you need any help?” Granny called.
“No, Granny, not yet,” Maida answered cheerfully.
But just the same, she did have to hurry. The children asked her for
all kinds of things and sometimes she could not remember where she
had put them. When in answer to the school bell the long lines began
to form at the big doorways, two round red spots were glowing in
Maida’s cheeks. She drew an involuntary sigh of relief when she
realized that she was going to have a chance to rest. But first she
counted the money she had taken in. Thirty-seven cents! It seemed a
great deal to her.
For an hour or more, nobody entered the shop. Billy left in a little
while for Boston. Granny, crooning an old Irish song, busied herself
upstairs in her bedroom. Maida sat back in her chair, dreaming
happily of her work. Suddenly the bell tinkled, rousing her with a
start.
It seemed a long time after the bell rang before the door opened.
But at last Maida saw the reason of the delay. The little boy who
stood on the threshold was lame. Maida would have known that he was
sick even if she had not seen the crutches that held him up, or the
iron cage that confined one leg.
His face was as colorless as if it had been made of melted wax. His
forehead was lined almost as if he were old. A tired expression in
his eyes showed that he did not sleep like other children. He must
often suffer, too—his mouth had a drawn look that Maida knew well.
The little boy moved slowly over to the counter. It could hardly be
said that he walked. He seemed to swing between his crutches exactly
as a pendulum swings in a tall clock. Perhaps he saw the sympathy
that ran from Maida’s warm heart to her pale face, for before he
spoke he smiled. And when he smiled you could not possibly think of
him as sick or sad. The corners of his mouth and the corners of his
eyes seemed to fly up together. It made your spirits leap just to
look at him.
“I’d like a sheet of red tissue paper,” he said briskly.
Maida’s happy expression changed. It was the first time that anybody
had asked her for anything which she did not have.
“I’m afraid I haven’t any,” she said regretfully.
The boy looked disappointed. He started to go away. Then he turned
hopefully. “Mrs. Murdock always kept her tissue paper in that drawer
there,” he said, pointing.
“Oh, yes, I do remember,” Maida exclaimed. She recalled now a few
sheets of tissue paper that she had left there, not knowing what to
do with them. She pulled the drawer open. There they were, neatly
folded, as she had left them.
“What did Mrs. Murdock charge for it?” she inquired.
“A cent a sheet.”
Maida thought busily. “I’m selling out all the old stock,” she said.
“You can have all that’s left for a cent if you want it.”
“Sure!” the boy exclaimed. “Jiminy crickets! That’s a stroke of luck
I wasn’t expecting.”
He spread the half dozen sheets out on the counter and ran through
them. He looked up into Maida’s face as if he wanted to thank her
but did not know how to put it. Instead, he stared about the shop.
“Say,” he exclaimed, “you’ve made this store look grand. I’d never
know it for the same place. And your sign’s a crackajack.”
The praise—the first she had had from outside—pleased Maida. It
emboldened her to go on with the conversation.
“You don’t go to school,” she said.
The moment she had spoken, she regretted it. It was plain to be
seen, she reproached herself inwardly, why he did not go to school.
“No,” the boy said soberly. “I can’t go yet. Doc O’Brien says I can
go next year, he thinks. I’m wild to go. The other fellows hate
school but I love it. I s’pose it’s because I can’t go that I want
to. But, then, I want to learn to read. A fellow can have a good
time anywhere if he knows how to read. I can read some,” he added in
a shamed tone, “but not much. The trouble is I don’t have anybody to
listen and help with the hard words.”
“Oh, let me help you!” Maida cried. “I can read as easy as
anything.” This was the second thing she regretted saying. For when
she came to think of it, she could not see where she was going to
have much time to herself.
But the little lame boy shook his head. “Can’t,” he said decidedly.
“You see, I’m busy at home all day long and you’ll be busy here. My
mother works out and I have to do most of the housework and take
care of the baby. Pretty slow work on crutches, you know—although
it’s easy enough getting round after you get the hang of it. No, I
really don’t have any time to fool until evenings.”
“Evenings!” Maida exclaimed electrically. “Why, that’s just the
right time! You see I’m pretty busy myself during the daytime—at my
business.” Her voice grew a little important on that last phrase.
“Granny! Granny!” she called.
Granny Flynn appeared in the doorway. Her eyes grew soft with pity
when they fell on the little lame boy. “The poor little gossoon!”
she murmured.
“Granny,” Maida explained, “this little boy can’t go to school
because his mother works all day and he has to do the housework and
take care of the baby, too, and he wants to learn to read because he
thinks he won’t be half so lonely with books, and you know, Granny,
that’s perfectly true, for I never suffered half so much with my
legs after I learned to read.”
It had all poured out in an uninterrupted stream. She had to stop
here to get breath.
“Now, Granny, what I want you to do is to let me hear him read
evenings until he learns how. You see his mother comes home then and
he can leave the baby with her. Oh, do let me do it, Granny! I’m
sure I could. And I really think you ought to. For, if you’ll excuse
me for saying so, Granny, I don’t think you can understand as well
as I do what a difference it will make.” She turned to the boy.
“Have you read ‘Little Men’ and ‘Little Women’?”
“No—why, I’m only in the first reader.”
“I’ll read them to you,” Maida said decisively, “and ‘Treasure
Island’ and ‘The Princes and the Goblins’ and ‘The Princess and
Curdie.’” She reeled off the long list of her favorites.
In the meantime, Granny was considering the matter. Dr. Pierce had
said to her of Maida: “Let her do anything that she wants to do—as
long as it doesn’t interfere with her eating and sleeping. The main
thing to do is to get her _to want to do things_.”
“What’s your name, my lad?” she asked.
“Dicky Dore, ma’am,” the boy answered respectfully.
“Well, Oi don’t see why you shouldn’t thry ut, acushla,” she said to
Maida. “A half an hour iv’ry avening after dinner. Sure, in a wake,
’twill be foine and grand we’ll be wid the little store running like
a clock.”
“We’ll begin next week, Monday,” Maida said eagerly. “You come over
here right after dinner.”
“All right.” The little lame boy looked very happy but, again, he
did not seem to know what to say. “Thank you, ma’am,” he brought out
finally. “And you, too,” turning to Maida.
“My name’s Maida.”
“Thank you, Maida,” the boy said with even a greater display of
bashfulness. He settled the crutches under his thin shoulders.
“Oh, don’t go, yet,” Maida pleaded. “I want to ask you some
questions. Tell me the names of those dear little girls—the twins.”
Dicky Dore smiled his radiant smile. “Their last name’s Clark. Say,
ain’t they the dead ringers for each other? I can’t tell Dorothy
from Mabel or Mabel from Dorothy.”
“I can’t, either,” Maida laughed. “It must be fun to be a twin—to
have any kind of a sister or brother. Who’s that big boy—the one
with the hair all hanging down on his face?”
“Oh, that’s Arthur Duncan.” Dicky’s whole face shone. “He’s a dandy.
He can lick any boy of his size in the neighborhood. I bet he could
lick any boy of his size in the world. I bet he could lick his
weight in wild-cats.”
Maida’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t like him,” she said. “He’s not
polite.”
“Well, I like him,” Dicky Dore maintained stoutly. “He’s the best
friend I’ve got anywhere. Arthur hasn’t any mother, and his father’s
gone all day. He takes care of himself. He comes over to my place a
lot. You’ll like him when you know him.”
The bell tinkling on his departure did not ring again till noon. But
Maida did not mind.
“Granny,” she said after Dicky left, “I think I’ve made a friend.
Not a friend somebody’s brought to me—but a friend of my very own.
Just think of that!”
At twelve, Maida watched the children pour out of the little
schoolhouse and disappear in all directions. At two, she watched
them reappear from all directions and pour into it again. But
between those hours she was so busy that she did not have time to
eat her lunch until school began again. After that, she sat
undisturbed for an hour.
In the middle of the afternoon, the bell rang with an
important-sounding tinkle. Immediately after, the door shut with an
important-sounding slam. The footsteps, clattering across the room to
the show case, had an important-sounding tap. And the little girl, who
looked inquisitively across the counter at Maida, had decidedly an
important manner.
She was not a pretty child. Her skin was too pasty, her blue eyes
too full and staring. But she had beautiful braids of glossy brown
hair that came below her waist. And you would have noticed her at
once because of the air with which she wore her clothes and because
of a trick of holding her head very high.
Maida could see that she was dressed very much more expensively than
the other children in the neighborhood. Her dark, blue coat was
elaborate with straps and bright buttons. Her pale-blue beaver hat
was covered with pale-blue feathers. She wore a gold ring with a
turquoise in it, a silver bracelet with a monogram on it, a little
gun-metal watch pinned to her coat with a gun-metal pin, and a long
string of blue beads from which dangled a locket.
Maida noticed all this decoration with envy, for she herself was
never permitted to wear jewelry. Occasionally, Granny would let her
wear one string from a big box of bead necklaces which Maida had
bought in Venice.
“How much is that candy?” the girl asked, pointing to one of the
trays.
Maida told her.
“Dear me, haven’t you anything better than that?”
Maida gave her all her prices.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing good enough here,” the little girl went
on disdainfully. “My mother won’t let me eat cheap candy. Generally,
she has a box sent over twice a week from Boston. But the one we
expected to-day didn’t come.”
“The little girl likes to make people think that she has nicer
things than anybody else,” Maida thought. She started to speak. If
she had permitted herself to go on, she would have said: “The candy
in this shop is quite good enough for any little girl. But I won’t
sell it to you, anyway.” But, instead, she said as quietly as she
could: “No, I don’t believe there’s anything here that you’ll care
for. But I’m sure you’ll find lots of expensive candy on Main
Street.”
The little girl evidently was not expecting that answer. She
lingered, still looking into the show case. “I guess I’ll take five
cents’ worth of peppermints,” she said finally. Some of the
importance had gone out of her voice.
Maida put the candy into a bag and handed it to her without
speaking. The girl bustled towards the door. Half-way, she stopped
and came back.
“My name is Laura Lathrop,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Maida.”
“Maida?” the girl repeated questioningly. “Maida?—oh, yes, I
know—Maida Flynn. Where did you live before you came here?”
“Oh, lots of places.”
“But where?” Laura persisted.
“Boston, New York, Newport, Pride’s Crossing, the Adirondacks,
Europe.”
“Oh, my! Have you been to Europe?” Laura’s tone was a little
incredulous.
“I lived abroad a year.”
“Can you speak French?”
“Oui, Mademoiselle, je parle Français un peu.”
“Say some more,” Laura demanded.
Maida smiled. “Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf,
dix, onze, douze—”
Laura looked impressed. “Do you speak any other language?”
“Italian and German—a very little.”
Laura stared hard at her and her look was full of question. But it
was evident that she decided to believe Maida.
“I live in Primrose Court,” she said, and now there was not a shadow
of condescension left in her voice. “That large house at the back
with the big lawn about it. I’d like to have you come and play with
me some afternoon. I’m very busy most of the time, though. I take
music and fancy dancing and elocution. Next winter, I’m going to
take up French. I’ll send you word some afternoon when I have time
to play.”
“Thank you,” Maida said in her most civil voice. “Come and play with
me sometime,” she added after a pause.
“Oh, my mother doesn’t let me play in other children’s houses,”
Laura said airily. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” Maida answered.
She waited until Laura had disappeared into the court. “Granny,” she
called impetuously, “a little girl’s been here who I think is the
hatefullest, horridest, disagreeablest thing I ever saw in my life.”
“Why, what did the choild do?” Granny asked in surprise.
“Do?” Maida repeated. “She did everything. Why, she—she—” She
interrupted herself to think hard a moment. “Well, it’s the queerest
thing. I can’t tell you a thing she did, Granny, and yet, all the
time she was here I wanted to slap her.”
“There’s manny folks that-a-way,” said Granny. “The woisest way is
to take no notuce av ut.”
“Take no notice of it!” Maida stormed. “It’s just like not taking
any notice of a bee when it’s stinging you.”
Maida was so angry that she walked into the living-room without
limping.
At four that afternoon, when the children came out of school, there
was another flurry of trade. Towards five, it slackened. Maida sat
in her swivel-chair and wistfully watched the scene in the court.
Little boys were playing top. Little girls were jumping rope. Once
she saw a little girl in a scarlet cape come out of one of the
yards. On one shoulder perched a fluffy kitten. Following her,
gamboled an Irish setter and a Skye terrier. Presently it grew dark
and the children began to go indoors. Maida lighted the gas and lost
herself in “Gulliver’s Travels.”
The sound of voices attracted her attention after awhile. She turned
in her chair. Outside, staring into the window, stood a little boy
and girl—a ragged, dirty pair. Their noses pressed so hard against
the glass that they were flattened into round white circles. They
took no notice of Maida. Dropping her eyes to her book, she
pretended to read.
“I boneys that red top, first,” said the little boy in a piping
voice.
He was a round, brown, pop-eyed, big-mouthed little creature. Maida
could not decide which he looked most like—a frog or a brownie. She
christened him “the Bogle” at once.
“I boneys that little pink doll with the curly hair, first,” said
the girl.
She was a round, brown little creature, too—but pretty. She had
merry brown eyes and a merry little red and white smile. Maida
christened her “the Robin.”
“I boneys that big agate, second,” said the Bogle.
“I boneys that little table, second,” said the Robin.
“I boneys that knife, third,” said the Bogle.
“I boneys that little chair, third,” said the Robin.
Maida could not imagine what kind of game they were playing. She
went to the door. “Come in, children,” she called.
The children jumped and started to run away. But they stopped a
little way off, turned and stood as if they were not certain what to
do. Finally the Robin marched over to Maida’s side and the Bogle
followed.
“Tell me about the game you were playing,” Maida said. “I never
heard of it before.”
“’Tain’t any game,” the Bogle said.
“We were just boneying,” the Robin explained. “Didn’t you ever boney
anything?”
“No.”
“Why, you boneys things in store windows,” the Robin went on. “You
always boney with somebody else. You choose one thing for yours and
they choose something else for theirs until everything in the window
is all chosen up. But of course they don’t really belong to you. You
only play they do.”
“I see,” Maida said.
She went to the window and took out the red top and the little pink
doll with curly hair. “Here, these are the things you boneyed first.
You may have them.”
“Oh, thank you—thank you—thank you,” the Robin exclaimed. She kissed
the little pink doll ecstatically, stopping now and then to look
gratefully at Maida.
“Thank you,” the Bogle echoed. He did not look at Maida but he began
at once to wind his top.
“What is your name?” Maida asked.
“Molly Doyle,” the Robin answered. “And this is my brother, Timmie
Doyle.”
“My name’s Maida. Come and see me again, Molly, and you, too,
Timmie.”
“Of course I’ll come,” Molly answered, “and I’m going to name my
doll ‘Maida.’”
Molly ran all the way home, her doll tightly clutched to her breast.
But Timmie stopped to spin his top six times—Maida counted.
No more customers came that evening. At six, Maida closed and locked
the shop.
After dinner she thought she would read one of her new books. She
settled herself in her little easy chair by the fire and opened to a
story with a fascinating picture. But the moment her eyes fell on
the page—it was the strangest thing—a drowsiness, as deep as a
fairy’s enchantment, fell upon her. She struggled with it for
awhile, but she could not throw it off. The next thing she knew,
Granny was helping her up the stairs, was undressing her, had laid
her in her bed. The next thing she was saying dreamily, “I made one
dollar and eighty-seven cents to-day. If my papa ever gets into any
more trouble in Wall Street, he can borrow from me.”
The next thing, she felt the pillow soft and cool under her cheek.
The next thing—bright sunlight was pouring through the window—it was
morning again.