The next day it rained dismally. Maida had been running the shop for
three weeks but this was her first experience with stormy weather.
Because she, herself, had never been allowed to set her foot
outdoors when the weather was damp, she expected that she would see
no children that day. But long before the bell rang they crowded in
wet streaming groups into the shop. And at nine the lines
disappearing into the big school doorways seemed as long as ever.
Even the Clark twins in rubber boots, long rain-capes and a baby
umbrella came in to spend their daily pennies.
“I guess it’ll be one session, Maida,” Dorothy whispered.
“Oh goody, Dorothy!” Mabel lisped. “Don’t you love one session,
Maida?”
Maida was ashamed to confess to two such tiny girls that she did not
know what “one session” meant. But she puzzled over it the whole
morning. If Rosie and Arthur had come in she would have asked them.
But neither of them appeared. Indeed, they were not anywhere in the
lines—Maida looked very carefully.
At twelve o’clock the school bell did not ring. In surprise, Maida
craned out of the window to consult the big church clock. It agreed
exactly with the tall grandfather’s clock in the living-room. Both
pointed to twelve, then to five minutes after and ten and
fifteen—still no bell.
A little later Dicky came swinging along, the sides of his old rusty
raincoat flapping like the wings of some great bird.
“It’s one-session, Maida,” he said jubilantly, “did you hear the
bell?”
“What’s one session, Dicky?” Maida asked.
“Why, when it’s too stormy for the children to go to school in the
afternoon the fire-bells ring twenty-two at quarter to twelve. They
keep all the classes in until one o’clock though.”
“Oh, that’s why they don’t come out,” Maida said.
At one o’clock the umbrellas began to file out of the school door.
The street looked as if it had grown a monster crop of shiny black
toad-stools. But it was the only sign of life that the neighborhood
showed for the rest of the day. The storm was too violent for even
the big boys and girls to brave. A very long afternoon went by. Not
a customer came into the shop. Maida felt very lonely. She wandered
from shop to living-room and from living-room to chamber. She tried
to read. She sewed a little. She even popped corn for a lonesome
fifteen minutes. But it seemed as if the long dark day would never
go.
As they were sitting down to dinner that night, Billy bounced in—his
face pink and wet, his eyes sparkling like diamonds from his
conflict with the winds.
“Oh, Billy, how glad I am to see you,” Maida said. “It’s been the
lonesomest day.”
“Sure, the sight av ye’s grand for sore eyes,” said Granny.
Maida had noticed that Billy’s appearance always made the greatest
difference in everything. Before he came, the noise of the wind
howling about the store made Maida sad. Now it seemed the jolliest
of sounds. And when at seven, Rosie appeared, Maida’s cup of
happiness brimmed over.
While Billy talked with Granny, the two little girls rearranged the
stock.
“My mother was awful mad with me just before supper,” Rosie began at
once. “It seems as if she was so cross lately that there’s no living
with her. She picks on me all the time. That’s why I’m here. She
sent me to bed. But I made up my mind I wouldn’t go to bed. I
climbed out my bedroom window and came over here.”
“Oh, Rosie, I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Maida said. “Oh, do run
right home! Think how worried your mother would be if she went up
into your room and found you gone. She wouldn’t know what had become
of you.”
“Well, then, what makes her so strict with me?” Rosie cried. Her
eyes had grown as black as thunder clouds. The scowl that made her
face so sullen had come deep between her eyebrows.
“Oh, how I wish I had a mother,” Maida said longingly. “I guess I
wouldn’t say a word to her, no matter how strict she was.”
“I guess you don’t know what you’d do until you tried it,” Rosie
said.
Granny and Billy had been curiously quiet in the other room.
Suddenly Billy Potter stepped to the door.
“I’ve just thought of a great game, children,” he said. “But we’ve
got to play it in the kitchen. Bring some crayons, Maida.”
The children raced after him. “What is it?” they asked in chorus.
Billy did not answer. He lifted Granny’s easy-chair with Granny,
knitting and all, and placed it in front of the kitchen stove. Then
he began to draw a huge rectangle on the clean, stone floor.
“Guess,” he said.
“Sure and Oi know what ut’s going to be,” smiled Granny.
Maida and Rosie watched him closely. Suddenly they both shouted
together:
“Hopscotch! Hopscotch!”
“Right you are!” Billy approved. He searched among the coals in the
hod until he found a hard piece of slate.
“All ready now!” he said briskly. “Your turn, first, Rosie, because
you’re company.”
Rosie failed on “fivesy.” Maida’s turn came next and she failed on
“threesy.” Billy followed Maida but he hopped on the line on
“twosy.”
“Oi belave Oi cud play that game, ould as Oi am,” Granny said
suddenly.
“I bet you could,” Billy said.
“Sure, ’twas a foine player Oi was when Oi was a little colleen.”
“Come on, Granny,” Billy said.
The two little girls jumped up and down, clapping their hands and
shrieking, “Granny’s going to play!” “Granny’s going to play!” They
made so much noise finally, that Billy had to threaten to stand them
on their heads in a corner.
Granny took her turn after Billy. She hopped about like a very
active and a very benevolent old fairy.
“Oh, doesn’t she look like the Dame in fairy tales?” Maida said.
They played for a half an hour. And who do you suppose won? Not
Maida with all her new-found strength, not Rosie with all her
nervous energy, not Billy with all his athletic training.
“Mrs. Delia Flynn, champion of America and Ireland,” Billy greeted
the victor. “Granny, we’ll have to enter you in the next Olympic
games.”
They returned after this breathless work to the living-room.
“Now I’m going to tell you a story,” Billy announced.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Maida squealed. “Do! Billy tells the most wonderful
stories, Rosie—stories he’s heard and stories he’s read. But the
most wonderful ones are those that he makes up as he goes along.”
The two little girls settled themselves on the hearth-rug at Billy’s
feet. Granny sat, not far off, working with double speed at her
neglected knitting.
“Once upon a time,” Billy said, “there lived a little girl named
Klara. And Klara was the naughtiest little girl in the world. She
was a pretty child and a clever child and everybody would have loved
her if she had only given them a chance. But how can you love a
child who is doing naughty things all the time? Particularly was she
a great trial to her mother. That poor lady was not well and needed
care and attention, herself. But instead of giving her these, Klara
gave her only hard words and disobedient acts. The mother used
sometimes to punish her little daughter but it seemed as if this
only made her worse. Both father and mother were in despair about
her. Klara seemed to be growing steadily worse and worse. And,
indeed, lately, she had added to her naughtiness by threatening to
run away.
“One night, it happened, Klara had been so bad that her mother had
put her to bed early. The moment her mother left the room, Klara
whipped over to the window. ‘I’m going to dress myself and climb out
the window and run away and never come back, she said to herself.’
“The house in which Klara lived was built on the side of a cliff,
overlooking the sea. As Klara stood there in her nightgown the moon
began to rise and come up out of the water. Now the moonrise is
always a beautiful sight and Klara stopped for a moment to watch it,
fascinated.
“It seemed to her that she had never seen the moon look so big
before. And certainly she had never seen it such a color—a soft deep
orange. In fact, it might have been an immense orange—or better, a
monster pumpkin stuck on the horizon-line.
“The strange thing about the moon, though, was that it grew larger
instead of smaller. It rose higher and higher, growing bigger and
bigger, until it was half-way up the curve of the sky. Then it
stopped short. Klara watched it, her eyes bulging out of her head.
In all her experience she had never seen such a surprising thing.
And while she watched, another remarkable thing happened. A great
door in the moon opened suddenly and there on the threshold stood a
little old lady. A strange little old lady she was—a little old lady
with short red skirts and high, gayly-flowered draperies at her
waist, a little old lady with a tall black, sugar-loaf hat, a great
white ruff around her neck and little red shoes with bright silver
buckles on them—a little old lady who carried a black cat perched on
one shoulder and a broomstick in one hand.
“The little old lady stooped down and lifted something over the
threshold. Klara strained her eyes to see what it was. It looked
like a great roll of golden carpeting. With a sudden deft movement
the little old lady threw it out of the door. It flew straight
across the ocean, unrolling as swiftly as a ball of twine that
you’ve flung across the room. It came nearer and nearer. The farther
it got from the moon, the faster it unrolled. After a while it
struck against the shore right under Klara’s window and Klara saw
that it was the wake of the moon. She watched.
“The little old lady had disappeared from the doorway in the moon
but the door did not close. And, suddenly, still another wonderful
thing happened. The golden wake lifted itself gradually from the
water until it was on a level with Klara’s window. Bending down she
touched it with both her soft little hands. It was as firm and hard
as if it had been woven from strands of gold.
“‘Now’s my time to run away from my cross mother,’ Klara said to
herself. ‘I guess that nice old lady in the moon wants me to come
and be her little girl. Well, I’ll go. I guess they’ll be sorry in
this house to-morrow when they wake up and find they’re never going
to see me again.’
“Opening the window gently that nobody might hear her, she stepped
on to the Wake of Gold. It felt cool and hard to her little bare
feet. It inclined gently from her window. She ran down the slope
until she reached the edge of the sea. There she hesitated. For a
moment it seemed a daring thing to walk straight out to the moon
with nothing between her and the water but a path of gold. Then she
recalled how her mother had sent her to bed and her heart hardened.
She started briskly out.
“From Klara’s window it had looked as though it would take her only
a few moments to get to the moon. But the farther she went, the
farther from her the doorway seemed to go. But she did not mind that
the walk was so long because it was so pretty. Looking over the edge
of the Wake of Gold, deep down in the water, she could see all kinds
of strange sights.
“At one place a school of little fish swam up to the surface of the
water. Klara knelt down and watched their pretty, graceful motions.
The longer she gazed the more fish she saw and the more beautiful
they seemed. Pale-blue fishes with silver spots. Pale-pink ones with
golden stripes. Gorgeous red ones with jewelled black horns.
Brilliant yellow and green ones that shone like phosphorus. And here
and there, gliding among them, were what seemed little angel-fish
like living rainbows, whose filmy wing-like fins changed color when
they swam.
“Klara reached into the water and tried to catch some of these
marvelous beings.
“But at her first motion—bing! The water looked as if it were
streaked with rainbow lightning. Swish! It was dull and clear again,
with nothing between her and the quiet, seaweed-covered bottom.
“A little farther along Klara came across a wonderful sea-grotto.
Again she knelt down on the Wake of Gold and watched. At the bottom
the sand was so white and shiny that it might have been made of
star-dust. Growing up from it were beds of marvelous seaflowers,
opening and shutting delicate petals, beautiful seafans that waved
with every ripple, high, thick shrubs and towering trees in which
the fishes had built their nests. In and out among all this
undergrowth, frisked tiny sea-horses, ridden by mischievous
sea-urchins. They leaped and trotted and galloped as if they were so
happy that they did not know what to do. Klara felt that she must
play with them. She put one little foot into the water to attract
their attention. Bing! The water seemed alive with scuttling things.
Swish! The grotto was so quiet that she could not believe that there
was anything living in it.
“A little farther on, Klara came upon a sight even more wonderful
than this—a village of mer-people. It was set so far down in the
water that it seemed a million miles away. And yet the water was so
clear that she felt she could touch the housetops.
“The mer-houses seemed to be made of a beautiful, sparkling white
coral with big, wide-open windows through which the tide drifted.
The mer-streets seemed to be cobbled in pearl, the sidewalks to be
paved in gold. At their sides grew mer-trees, the highest she had
ever seen, with all kinds of beautiful singing fish roosting in
their branches. Little mer-boats of carved pink coral with purple
seaweed sails or of mother-of-pearl with rosy, mer-flower-petal
sails, were floating through the streets. In some, sat little
mer-maidens, the sunlight flashing on their pretty green scales, on
their long, golden tresses, on the bright mirrors they held in their
hands. Other boats held little mer-boys who made beautiful music on
the harps they carried.
“At one end of the mer-village Klara could see one palace, bigger
and more beautiful than all the others. Through an open window she
caught a glimpse of the mer-king—a jolly old fellow with a fat red
face and a long white beard sitting on a throne of gold. At his side
reclined the mer-queen—a very beautiful lady with a skin as white as
milk and eyes as green as emeralds. Little mer-princes and little
mer-princesses were playing on the floor with tiny mer-kittens and
tinier mer-puppies. One sweet little mer-baby was tiptailing towards
the window with a pearl that she had stolen from her sister’s
coronet.
“It seemed to Klara that this mer-village was the most enchanting
place that she had ever seen in her life. Oh, how she wanted to live
there!
“‘Oh, good mer-king,’ she called entreatingly, ‘and good mer-queen,
please let me come to live in your palace.’
“Bing! The water rustled and roiled as if all the birds of paradise
that the world contained had taken flight. Swish! It was perfectly
quiet again. The mer-village was as deserted as a graveyard.
“‘Well, if they don’t want me, they shan’t get me, Klara said. And
she walked on twice as proud.’
“By this time she was getting closer and closer to the moon. The
nearer she came the bigger it grew. Now it filled the entire sky.
The door had remained open all this time. Through it she could see a
garden—a garden more beautiful than any fairy-tale garden that she
had ever read about. From the doorway silvery paths stretched
between hedges as high as a giant’s head. Sometimes these paths
ended in fountains whose spray twisted into all kinds of fairy-like
shapes. Sometimes these paths seemed to stop flush against the
clouds. Nearer stretched flower-beds so brilliant that you would
have thought a kaleidoscope had broken on the ground. Birds, like
living jewels, flew in and out through the tree-branches. They sang
so hard that it seemed to Klara they must burst their little
throats. From the branches hung all kinds of precious stones, all
kinds of delicious-looking fruits and candies.
“Klara could not scramble through the door quickly enough.
“But as she put one foot on the threshold the little old lady
appeared. She looked as if she had stepped out of a fairy-tale. And
yet Klara had a strange feeling of discomfort when she looked at
her. It seemed to Klara that the old lady’s mouth was cruel and her
eyes hard.
“‘Are you the little girl who’s run away?’ the old lady asked.
“‘Yes,’ Klara faltered.
“‘And you want to live in the Kingdom of the Moon?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Enter then.’
“The old lady stepped aside and Klara marched across the threshold.
She felt the door swinging to behind her. She heard a bang as it
closed, shutting her out of the world and into the moon.
“And then—and then—what do you think happened?”
Billy stopped for a moment. Rosie and Maida rose to their knees.
“What happened?” they asked breathlessly.
“The garden vanished as utterly as if it were a broken soap-bubble.
Gone were the trees and the flowers; gone were the fountains and the
birds; gone, too, were the jewels, the candies and the fruits.
“The place had become a huge, dreary waste, stretching as far as
Klara could see into the distance. It seemed to her as if all the
trash that the world had outgrown had been dumped here—it was so
covered with heaps of old rubbish.
“Klara turned to the old lady. She had not changed except that her
cruel mouth sneered.
“Klara burst into tears. ‘I want to go home,’ she screamed. ‘Let me
go back to my mother.’
“The old lady only smiled. ‘You open that door and let me go back to
my mother,’ Klara cried passionately.
“‘But I can’t open it,’ the old lady said. ‘It’s locked. I have no
keys.’
“‘Where are the keys?’ Klara asked.
“The old lady pointed to the endless heaps of rubbish. ‘There,
somewhere,’ she said.
“‘I’ll find them,’ Klara screamed, ‘and open that door and run back
to my home. You shan’t keep me from my own dear mother, you wicked
woman.’
“‘Nobody wants to keep you,’ the old lady said. ‘You came of your
own accord. Find the keys if you want to go back.’
“That was true and Klara wisely did not answer. But you can fancy
how she regretted coming. She began to search among the dump-heaps.
She could find no keys. But the longer she hunted the more
determined she grew. It seemed to her that she searched for weeks
and weeks.
“It was very discouraging, very dirty and very fatiguing work. She
moved always in a cloud of dust. At times it seemed as if her back
would break from bending so much. Often she had to bite her lips to
keep from screaming with rage after she had gone through a
rubbish-pile as high as her head and, still, no keys. All kinds of
venomous insects stung her. All kinds of vines and brambles scratched
her. All kinds of stickers and thistles pricked her. Her little feet
and hands bled all the time. But still she kept at it. After that first
conversation, Klara never spoke with the old lady again. After a few
days Klara left her in the distance. At the end of a week, the
moon-door was no longer in sight when Klara looked back.
“But during all those weeks of weary work Klara had a chance to
think. She saw for the first time what a naughty little girl she had
been and how she had worried the kindest mother in the world. Her
longing for her mother grew so great at times that she had to sit
down and cry. But after a while she would dry her eyes and go at the
hunt with fresh determination.
“One day she caught a glint of something shining from a clump of
bushes. She had to dig and dig to get at it for about these bushes
the ashes were packed down hard. But finally she uncovered a pair of
iron keys. On one was printed in letters of gold, ‘I’M SORRY,’ on
the other, ‘I’LL NEVER DO SO AGAIN.’
“Klara seized the keys joyfully and ran all the long way back to the
great door. It had two locks. She put one key in the upper lock,
turned it—a great bolt jarred. She put the other key into the second
lock, turned it—a great bolt jarred. The door swung open.
“‘I’m sorry,’ Klara whispered to herself. ‘I’ll never do so again.’
“She had a feeling that as long as she said those magic words,
everything would go well with her.
“Extending out from the door was the Wake of Gold. Klara bounded
through the opening and ran. She turned back after a few moments and
there was the old lady with her cat and her broomstick standing in
the doorway. But the old lady’s face had grown very gentle and kind.
“Klara did not look long. She ran as fast as she could pelt across
the golden path, whispering, ‘I’m sorry. I will never do so again.
I’m sorry. I will never do so again. I’m sorry. I will never do so
again.’
“And as she ran all the little mer-people came to the surface of the
water to encourage her. The little mer-maidens flashed their mirrors
at her. The little mer-boys played wonderful music on their harps.
The mer-king gave her a jolly smile and the mer-queen blew her a
kiss. All the little mer-princesses and all the little mer-princes
held up their pets to her. Even the mer-baby clapped her dimpled
hands.
“And farther on all the little sea horses with the sea urchins on
their backs assembled in bobbing groups. And farther on all the
little rainbow fishes gathered in shining files. As she ran all the
scratches and gashes in her flesh healed up.
“After a while she reached her own window. Opening it, she jumped
in. Turning to pull it down she saw the old lady disappear from the
doorway of the moon, saw the door close upon her, saw the Wake of
Gold melt and fall into the sea where it lay in a million gleaming
spangles, saw the moon float up into the sky, growing smaller and
smaller and paler and paler until it was no larger than a silver
plate. And now it was the moon no longer—it was the sun. Its rays
were shining hot on her face. She was back in her little bed. Her
mother’s arms were about her and Klara was saying, ‘I’m SORRY. I
WILL NEVER DO SO AGAIN.’”
----------------------
For a long time after Billy finished the room was very quiet. Then
suddenly Rosie jumped to her feet. “That was a lovely story, Billy,”
she said. “But I guess I don’t want to hear any more now. I think
I’ll go home.”