The next week was a week of trouble for Maida. Everything seemed to
go wrong from the first tinkle of the bell, Monday morning, to the
last tinkle Saturday night.
It began with a conversation.
Rosie came marching in early Monday, head up, eyes flaming.
“Maida,” she began at once, in her quickest, briskest tone, “I’ve
got something to tell you. Laura Lathrop came over to Dicky’s house
the other day while the W.M.N.T.’s were meeting and she told us the
greatest mess of stuff about you. I told her I was coming right over
and tell you about it and she said, ‘All right, you can.’ Laura said
that you said that last summer you had a birthday party that you
invited five hundred children to. She said that you said that you
had a May-pole at this party and a fish pond and a Punch and Judy
show and all sorts of things. She said that you said that you had a
big doll-house and a little theater all your own. I said that I
didn’t believe that you told her all that. Did you?”
“Oh, yes, I told her that—and more,” Maida answered directly.
“Laura said it was all a pack of lies, but I don’t believe that. Is
it all true?”
“It’s all true,” Maida said.
Rosie looked at her hard. “You know, Maida,” she went on after
awhile, “you told me about a lot of birds and animals that your
father had. I thought he kept a bird-place. But Dicky says you told
him that your father had twelve peacocks, not in a store, but in a
place where he lives.” She paused and looked inquiringly at Maida.
Maida answered the look. “Yes, I told him that.”
“And it’s all true?” Rosie asked again.
“Yes, it’s all true,” Maida repeated.
Rosie hesitated a moment. “Harold Lathrop says that you’re daffy.”
Maida said nothing.
“Arthur Duncan says,” Rosie went on more timidly, “that you probably
dreamed those things.”
Still Maida said nothing.
“Do you think you did dream them, Maida?”
Maida smiled. “No, I didn’t dream them.”
“Well, I thought of another thing,” Rosie went on eagerly. “Miss
Allison told mother that Granny told her that you’d been sick for a
long time. And I thought, maybe you were out of your head and
imagined those things. Oh, Maida,” Rosie’s voice actually coaxed her
to favor this theory, “don’t you think you imagined them?”
Maida laughed. “No, Rosie,” she said in her quietest voice, “I did
not imagine them.”
For a moment neither of the two little girls spoke. But they stared,
a little defiantly, into each other’s eyes.
“What did Dicky say?” Maida asked after awhile.
“Oh, Dicky said he would believe anything you told him, no matter
what it was. Dicky says he believes you’re a princess in
disguise—like in fairy-tales.”
“Dear, dear Dicky!” Maida said. “He was the first friend I made in
Primrose Court and I guess he’s the best one.”
“Well, I guess I’m your friend,” Rosie said, firing up; “I told that
little smarty-cat of a Laura if she ever said one word against you,
I’d slap her good and hard. Only—only—it seems strange that a little
girl who’s just like the rest of us should have story-book things
happening to her all the time. If it’s true—then fairy-tales are
true.” She paused and looked Maida straight in the eye. “I can’t
believe it, Maida. But I know you believe it. And that’s all there
is to it. But you’d better believe I’m your friend.”
Saying which she marched out.
Maida’s second trouble began that night.
It had grown dark. Suddenly, without any warning, the door of the
shop flew open. For an instant three or four voices filled the place
with their yells. Then the door shut. Nothing was heard but the
sound of running feet.
Granny and Maida rushed to the door. Nobody was in sight.
“Who was it? What does it mean, Granny?” Maida asked in
bewilderment. “Only naughty b’ys, taysing you,” Granny explained.
Maida had hardly seated herself when the performance was repeated.
Again she rushed to the door. Again she saw nobody. The third time
she did not stir from her chair.
Tuesday night the same thing happened. Who the boys were Maida could
not find out. Why they bothered her, she could not guess.
“Take no notuce av ut, my lamb,” Granny counselled. “When they foind
you pay no attintion to ut, they’ll be afther stopping.”
Maida followed Granny’s advice. But the annoyance did not cease and
she began to dread the twilight. She made up her mind that she must
put an end to it soon. She knew she could stop it at once by
appealing to Billy Potter. And, yet, somehow, she did not want to
ask for outside help. She had a feeling of pride about handling her
own troubles.
One afternoon Laura came into the shop. It was the first time that
Maida had seen her since the afternoon of her call and Maida did not
speak. She felt that she could not have anything to do with Laura
after what had happened. But she looked straight at Laura and
waited.
Laura did not speak either. She looked at Maida as if she had never
seen her before. She carried her head at its highest and she moved
across the room with her most important air. As she stood a moment
gazing at the things in the show case, she had never seemed more
patronizing.
“A cent’s worth of dulse, please,” she said airily.
“Dulse?” Maida repeated questioningly; “I guess I haven’t any. What
is dulse?”
“Haven’t any dulse?” Laura repeated with an appearance of being
greatly shocked. “Do you mean to say you haven’t any dulse?”
Maida did not answer—she put her lips tight together.
“This is a healthy shop,” Laura went on in a sneering tone, “no
mollolligobs, no apple-on-the-stick, no tamarinds, no pop-corn
balls, no dulse. Why don’t you sell the things we want? Half the
children in the neighborhood are going down to Main Street to get
them now.”
She bustled out of the shop. Maida stared after her with wide,
alarmed eyes. For a moment she did not stir. Then she ran into the
living-room and buried her face in Granny’s lap, bursting into
tears.
“Oh, Granny,” she sobbed, “Laura Lathrop says that half the children
don’t like my shop and they’re going down to Main Street to buy
things. What shall I do? What shall I do?”
“There, there, acushla,” Granny said soothingly, taking the
trembling little girl on to her lap. “Don’t worry about anny t’ing
that wan says. ’Tis a foine little shop you have, as all the grown
folks says.”
“But, Granny,” Maida protested passionately, “I don’t want to please
the grown people, I want to please the children. And papa said I
must make the store pay. And now I’m afraid I never will. Oh, what
shall I do?”
She got no further. A tinkle of the bell, followed by pattering
footsteps, interrupted. In an instant, Rosie, brilliant in her
scarlet cape and scarlet hat, with cheeks and lips the color of
cherries, stood at her side.
“I saw that hateful Laura come out of here,” she said. “I just knew
she’d come in to make trouble. What did she say to you?”
Maida told her slowly between her sobs.
“Horrid little smarty-cat!” was Rosie’s comment and she scowled
until her face looked like a thunder-cloud.
“I shall never speak to her again,” Maida declared fervently. “But
what shall I do about it, Rosie?—it may be true what she said.”
“Now don’t you get discouraged, Maida,” Rosie said. “Because I can
tell you just how to get or make those things Laura spoke of.”
“Oh, can you, Rosie. What would I do without you? I’ll put
everything down in a book so that I shan’t forget them.”
She limped over to the desk. There the black head bent over the
golden one.
“What is dulse?” Maida demanded first.
“Don’t you know what dulse is?” Rosie asked incredulously. “Maida,
you are the queerest child. The commonest things you don’t know
anything about. And yet I suppose if I asked you if you’d seen a
flying-machine, you’d say you had.”
“I have,” Maida answered instantly, “in Paris.”
Rosie’s face wrinkled into its most perplexed look. She changed the
subject at once. “Well, dulse is a purple stuff—when you see a lot
of it together, it looks as if a million toy-balloons had burst.
It’s all wrinkled up and tastes salty.”
Maida thought hard for a moment. Then she burst into laughter,
although the big round tear-drops were still hanging from the tips
of her lashes. “There was a whole drawerful here when I first came.
I remember now I thought it was waste stuff and threw it all away.”
Rosie laughed too. “The tamarinds you can get from the man who comes
round with the wagon. Mrs. Murdock used to make her own
apples-on-the-stick, mollolligobs and corn-balls. I’ve helped her many a
time. Now I’ll write you a list of stuff to order from the grocer. I’ll
come round after school and we’ll make a batch of all those things.
To-night you get Billy to print a sign, ‘_apples on the stick and
mollolligobs to-day_.’ You put that in the window to-morrow morning
and by to-morrow night, you’ll be all sold out.”
“Oh, Rosie,” Maida said happily, “I shall be so much obliged to
you!”
Rosie was as good as her word. She appeared that afternoon wearing a
long-sleeved apron under the scarlet cape. It seemed to Maida that
she worked like lightning, for she made batch after batch of candy,
moving as capably about the stove as an experienced cook. In the
meantime, Maida was popping corn at the fireplace. They mounted
fifty apples on skewers and dipped them, one at a time, into the
boiling candy. They made thirty corn-balls and twenty-five
mollolligobs, which turned out to be round chunks of candy, stuck on
the end of sticks.
“I never did see such clever children anywhere as there are in
Primrose Court,” Maida said that night with a sigh to Granny. “Rosie
told me that she could make six kinds of candy. And Dicky can cook
as well as his mother. They make me feel so useless. Why, Granny, I
can’t do a single thing that’s any good to anybody.”
The next day the shop was crowded. By night there was not an apple,
a corn-ball or a mollolligob left.
“I shall have a sale like this once a week in the future,” Maida
said. “Why, Granny, lots and lots of children came here who’d never
been in the shop before.”
And so what looked like serious trouble ended very happily.
Trouble number three was a great deal more serious and it did not,
at first, promise to end well at all. It had to do with Arthur
Duncan. It had been going on for a week before Maida mentioned it to
anybody. But it haunted her very dreams.
Early Monday morning, Arthur came into the shop. In his usual gruff
voice and with his usual surly manner, he said, “Show me some of
those rubbers in the window.”
Maida took out a handful of the rubbers—five, she thought—and put
them on the counter. While Arthur looked them over, she turned to
replace a paper-doll which she had knocked down.
“Guess I won’t take one to-day,” Arthur said, while her back was
still turned, and walked out.
When Maida put the rubbers back, she discovered that there were only
four. She made up her mind that she had not counted right and
thought no more of the incident.
Two days later, Arthur Duncan came in again. Maida had just been
selling some pencils—pretty striped ones with a blue stone in the
end. Three of them were left lying out on the counter. Arthur asked
her to show him some penholders. Maida took three from the shelves
back of her. He bought one of these. After he had gone, she
discovered that there were only two pencils left on the counter.
“One of them must have rolled off,” Maida thought. But although she
looked everywhere, she could not find it. The incident of the rubber
occurred to her. She felt a little troubled but she resolved to put
both circumstances out of her mind.
A day or two later, Arthur Duncan came in for the third time. It
happened that Granny was out marketing.
Piled on the counter was a stack of blank-books—pretty books they
were, with a child’s head in color on the cover. Arthur asked for
letter-paper. Maida turned back to the shelf. With her hand on the
sliding door, she stopped, half-stunned.
_Reflected in the glass she saw Arthur Duncan stow one of the blank
books away in his pocket._
Maida felt sick all over. She did not know what to do. She did not
know what to say.
She fumbled with trembling hands among the things on the shelf. She
dreaded to turn for fear her face would express what she had seen.
“Perhaps he’ll pay for it,” she thought; “I hope he will.”
But Arthur made no offer to pay. He looked over the letter-paper
that Maida, with downcast eyes, put before him, decided that he did
not want any after all, and walked coolly from the shop.
Granny, coming in a few moments later, was surprised to find Maida
leaning on the counter, her face buried in her hands.
“What’s the matter with my lamb?” the old lady asked cheerfully.
“Nothing, Granny,” Maida said. But she did not meet Granny’s eye and
during dinner she was quiet and serious.
That night Billy Potter called. “Well, how goes the _Bon Marché of_
Charlestown?” he asked cheerfully.
“Billy,” Maida said gravely, “if you found that a little boy—I can’t
say what his name is—was stealing from you, what would you do?”
Billy considered the question as gravely as she had asked it. “Tell
the policeman on the beat and get him to throw a scare into him,” he
said at last.
“I guess that’s what I’ll have to do.” But Maida’s tone was
mournful.
But Granny interrupted.
“Don’t you do ut, my lamb—don’t you do ut!” She turned to them
both—they had never seen her blue eyes so fiery before. “Suppose you
was one av these poor little chilthren that lives round here that’s
always had harrd wurruds for their meals and hunger for their
pillow, wudn’t you be afther staling yersilf if ut came aisy-loike
and nobody was luking?”
Neither Billy nor Maida spoke for a moment.
“I guess Granny’s right,” Billy said finally.
“I guess she is,” Maida said with a sigh.
It was three days before Arthur Duncan came into the shop again. But
in the meantime, Maida went one afternoon to play with Dicky. Dicky
was drawing at a table when Maida came in. She glanced at his work.
He was using a striped pencil with a blue stone in its end, a
blank-book with the picture of a little girl on the cover, a rubber of
a kind very familiar to her. Maida knew certainly that Dicky had
bought none of these things from her. She knew as certainly that
they were the things Arthur Duncan had stolen. What was the
explanation of the mystery? She went to bed that night miserably
unhappy.
Her heart beat pit-a-pat the next time she saw Arthur open the door.
She folded her hands close together so that he should not see that
she was trembling. She began to wish that she had followed Billy’s
advice. Sitting in the shop all alone—Granny, it happened again, was
out—it occurred to her that it was, perhaps, too serious a situation
for a little girl to deal with.
She had made up her mind that when Arthur was in the shop, she would
not turn her back to him. She was determined not to give him the
chance to fall into temptation. But he asked for pencil-sharpeners
and pencil-sharpeners were kept in the lower drawer. There was
nothing for her to do but to get down on the floor. She remembered
with a sense of relief that she had left no stock out on the
counter. She knelt upright on the floor, seeking for the box.
Suddenly, reflected in the glass door, she saw another terrifying
picture.
_Arthur Duncan’s arm was just closing the money drawer._
For an instant Maida felt so sick at heart that she wanted to run
back into the living-room, throw herself into Granny’s big chair and
cry her eyes out. Then suddenly all this weakness went. A feeling,
such as she had never known, came into its place. She was still
angry but she was singularly cool. She felt no more afraid of Arthur
Duncan than of the bowl of dahlias, blooming on the counter.
She whirled around in a flash and looked him straight in the eye.
“If there is anything in this shop that you want so much that you
are willing to steal, tell me what it is and I’ll give it to you,”
she said.
“Aw, what are you talking about?” Arthur demanded. He attempted to
out-stare her.
But Maida kept her eyes steadily on his. “You know what I’m talking
about well enough,” she said quietly. “In the last week you’ve
stolen a rubber and a pencil and a blank-book from me and just now
you tried to take some money from the money-drawer.”
Arthur sneered. “How are you going to prove it?” he asked
impudently.
Maida was thoroughly angry. But something inside warned her that she
must not give way to temper. For all her life, she had been
accustomed to think before she spoke. Indeed, she herself had never
been driven or scolded. Her father had always reasoned with her.
Doctors and nurses had always reasoned with her. Even Granny had
always reasoned with her. So, now, she thought very carefully before
she spoke again. But she kept her eyes fixed on Arthur. His eyes did
not move from hers but, in some curious way, she knew that he was
uneasy.
“I can’t prove it,” she said at last, “and I hadn’t any idea of
trying to. I’m only warning you that you must not come in here if
you’re not to be trusted. And I told you the truth when I said I
would rather give you anything in the shop than have you steal it.
For I think you must need those things very badly to be willing to
get them that way. I don’t believe anybody _wants_ to steal. Now
when you want anything so bad as that, come to me and I’ll see if I
can get it for you.”
Arthur stared at her as if he had not a word on his tongue. “If you
think you can frighten me,—” he said. Then, without ending his
sentence, he swaggered out of the shop. But to Maida his swagger
seemed like something put on to conceal another feeling.
Maida suddenly felt very tired. She wished that Granny Flynn would
come back. She wanted Granny to take her into her lap, to cuddle
her, to tell her some merry little tale of the Irish fairies. But,
instead, the bell rang and another customer came in. While she was
waiting on her, Maida noticed somebody come stealthily up to the
window, look in and then duck down. She wondered if it might be
Billy playing one of his games on her.
The customer went out. In a few moments the bell tinkled again.
Maida had been leaning against the counter, her tired head on her
outstretched arms. She looked up. It was Arthur Duncan.
He strode straight over to her.
“Here’s three cents for your rubber,” he said, “and five for your
pencil, five for the blank book and there’s two dimes I took out of
the money-drawer.”
Maida did not know what to say. The tears came to her eyes and
rolled down her cheeks. Arthur shifted his weight from one foot to
the other in intense embarrassment.
“I didn’t know it would make you feel as bad as that,” he said.
“I don’t feel bad,” Maida sobbed—and to prove it she smiled while
the tears ran down her cheeks—“I feel glad.”
What he would have answered to this she never knew. For at that
moment the door flew open. The little rowdy boys who had been
troubling her so much lately, let out a series of blood-curdling
yells.
“What’s that?” Arthur asked.
“I don’t know who they are,” Maida said wearily, “but they do that
three or four times every night. I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Well, I do,” Arthur said. “You wait!”
He went over to the door and waited, flattening himself against the
wall. After a long silence, they could hear footsteps tip-toeing on
the bricks outside. The door flew open. Arthur Duncan leaped like a
cat through the opening. There came back to Maida the sound of
running, then a pause, then another sound very much as if two or
three naughty little heads were being vigorously knocked together.
She heard Arthur say:
“Let me catch one of you doing that again and I’ll lick you till you
can’t stand up. And remember I’ll be watching for you every night
now.”
Maida did not see him again then. But just before dinner the bell
rang. When Maida opened the door there stood Arthur.
“I had this kitten and I thought you might like him,” he said
awkwardly, holding out a little bundle of gray fluff.
“Want it!” Maida said. She seized it eagerly. “Oh, thank you,
Arthur, ever so much. Oh, Granny, look at this darling kit-kat. What
a ball of fluff he is! I’ll call him Fluff. And he isn’t an Angora
or a prize kitty of any kind—just a beautiful plain everyday cat—the
kind I’ve always wanted!”
Even this was not all. After dinner the shop bell rang again. This
time it was Arthur and Rosie. Rosie’s lips were very tight as if she
had made up her mind to some bold deed but her flashing eyes showed
her excitement.
“Can we see you alone for a moment, Maida?” she asked in her most
business-like tones.
Wondering, Maida shut the door to the living-room and came back to
them.
“Maida,” Rosie began, “Arthur told me all about the rubber and the
pencil and the blank book and the dimes. Of course, I felt pretty
bad when I heard about it. But I wanted Arthur to come right over
here and explain the whole thing to you. You see Arthur took those
things to give away to Dicky because Dicky has such a hard time
getting anything he wants.”
“Yes, I saw them over at Dicky’s,” Maida said.
“And then, there was a great deal more to it that Arthur’s just told
me and I thought you ought to know it at once. You see Arthur’s
father belongs to a club that meets once a month and Arthur goes
there a lot with him. And those men think that plenty of people have
things that they have no right to—oh, like automobiles—I mean,
things that they haven’t earned. And the men in Mr. Duncan’s club
say that it’s perfectly right to take things away from people who
have too much and give them to people who have too little. But I say
that may be all right for grown people but when children do it, it’s
just plain _stealing_. And that’s all there is to it! But I wanted
you to know that Arthur thought it was right—well sort of right, you
understand—when he took those things. You don’t think so now, do
you, after the talking-to I’ve given you?” She turned severely on
Arthur.
Arthur shuffled and looked embarrassed. “No,” he said sheepishly,
“not until you’re grown up.”
“But what I wanted to say next, Maida,” Rosie continued, “is, please
not to tell Dicky. He would be so surprised—and then he wouldn’t
keep the things that Arthur gave him. And of course now that Arthur
has paid for them—they’re all right for him to have.”
“Of course I wouldn’t tell anybody,” Maida said in a shocked voice,
“not even Granny or Billy—not even my father.”
“Then that’s settled,” Rosie said with a sigh. “Good night.”
The next day the following note reached Maida:
You are cordully invited to join the W.M.N.T. Club which meets
three times a week at the house of Miss Rosie Brine, or Mr.
Richard Dore or Mr. Arthur Duncan.
P.S. The name means, WE MUST NEVER TELL.
Maida dreamed nothing but happy dreams that night.