Maida's Little Shop Part 12

She knew nothing about geography and yet, her conversation was full of such phrases as "The spring we were in Paris" or "The winter we spent in Rome." She knew nothing about nouns and verbs but she talked Italian fluently with the hand-organ man who came every week and many of her books were in French. She knew nothing about fractions or decimals, yet she referred familiarly to "drawing checks," to gold eagles and to Wall Street. Her writing was so bad that the children made fun of it, yet she could spin off a letter of eight pages in a flash. And she told the most wonderful fairy-tales that had ever been heard in Primrose Court.

Because of all these things the children had a kind of contempt for her mingled with a curious awe.

She was so polite with grown people that it was fairly embarra.s.sing.

She always arose from her chair when they entered the room, always picked up the things they dropped and never interrupted. And yet she could carry on a long conversation with them. She never said, "Yes, ma'am," or "No, ma'am." Instead, she said, "Yes, Mrs. Brine," or "No, Miss Allison," and she looked whomever she was talking with straight in the eye.

She would play with the little children as willingly as with the bigger ones. Often when the older girls and boys were in school, she would bring out a lapful of toys and spend the whole morning with the little ones. When Granny called her, she would give all the toys away, dividing them with a careful justice. And, yet, whenever children bought things of her in the shop, she always expected them to pay the whole price. You can see how the neighborhood would fairly buzz with talk about her.

As for Maida-with all this newness of friend-making and out-of-doors games, it is not to be wondered that her head was a jumble at the end of each day. In that delicious, dozy interval before she fell asleep at night, all kinds of pretty pictures seemed to paint themselves on her eyelids.

Now it was Rose-Red swaying like a great overgrown scarlet flower from the bars of a lamp-post. Now it was d.i.c.ky hoisting himself along on his crutches, his face alight with his radiant smile. Now it was a line of laughing, rosy-cheeked children, as long as the tail of a kite, pelting to goal at the magic cry "Liberty poles are bending!" Or it was a group of little girls, setting out rows and rows of bright-colored paper-dolls among the shadows of one of the deep old doorways. But always in a few moments came the sweetest kind of sleep. And always through her dreams flowed the plaintive music of "Go in and out the windows." Often she seemed to wake in the morning to the Clarion cry, "Hoist the sail!"

It did not seem to Maida that the days were long enough to do all the things she wanted to do.

CHAPTER VI: TWO CALLS

One morning, Laura Lathrop came bustling importantly into the shop.

"Good morning, Maida," she said; "you may come over to my house this afternoon and play with me if you'd like."

"Thank you, Laura," Maida answered. To anybody else, she would have added, "I shall be delighted to come." But to Laura, she only said, "It is kind of you to ask me."

"From about two until four," Laura went on in her most superior tone. "I suppose you can't get off for much longer than that."

"Granny is always willing to wait on customers if I want to play,"

Maida explained, "but I think she would not want me to stay longer than that, anyway."

"Very well, then. Shall we say at two?" Laura said this with a very grown-up air. Maida knew that she was imitating her mother.

Laura had scarcely left when d.i.c.ky appeared, swinging between his crutches. "Maida," he said, "I want you to come over to-morrow afternoon and see my place. You've not seen Delia yet and there's a whole lot of things I want to show you. I'm going to clean house to-day so's I'll be all ready for you to-morrow."

"Oh, thank you," Maida said. The sparkle that always meant delight came into her face. "I shall be delighted. I've always wanted to go over and see you ever since I first knew you. But Granny said to wait until you invited me. And I really have never seen Delia except when Rosie's had her in the carriage. And then she's always been asleep."

"You have to see Delia in the house to know what a naughty baby she is," d.i.c.ky said. He spoke as if that were the finest tribute that he could pay his little sister.

"Granny," Maida said that noon at lunch, "Laura Lathrop came here and invited me to come to see her this afternoon and I just hate the thought of going-I don't know why. Then d.i.c.ky came and invited me to come and see him to-morrow afternoon and I just love the thought of going. Isn't it strange?"

"Very," Granny said, smiling. "But you be sure to be a noice choild this afternoon, no matter what that wan says to you."

Granny always referred to Laura as "that wan."

"Oh, yes, I'll be good, Granny. Isn't it funny," Maida went on. The tone of her voice showed that she was thinking hard. "Laura makes me mad-oh, just hopping mad,"-"hopping mad" was one of Rosie's expressions-"and yet it seems to me I'd die before I'd let her know it."

Laura was waiting for her on the piazza when Maida presented herself at the Lathrop door. "Won't you come in and take your things off, first?" she said. "I thought we'd play in the house for awhile."

She took Maida immediately upstairs to her bedroom-a large room all furnished in blue-blue paper, blue bureau scarf covered with lace, blue bed-spread covered with lace, a big, round, blue roller where the pillows should be.

"How do you like my room, Maida?"

"It's very pretty."

"This is my toilet-set." Laura pointed to the glittering articles on the bureau. "Papa's given them to me, one piece at a time. It's all of silver and every thing has my initials on it. What is your set of?"

Laura paused before she asked this last question and darted one of her sideways looks at Maida. "She thinks I haven't any toilet-set and she wants to make me say so," Maida thought. "Ivory," she said aloud.

"Ivory! I shouldn't think that would be very pretty."

Laura opened her bureau drawers, one at a time, and showed Maida the pretty clothes packed in neat piles there. She opened the large closet and displayed elaborately-made frocks, suspended on hangers.

And all the time, with little sharp, sideways glances, she was studying the effect on Maida. But Maida's face betrayed none of the wonder and envy that Laura evidently expected. Maida was very polite but it was evident that she was not much interested.

Next they went upstairs to a big playroom which covered the whole top of the house. Shelves covered with books and toys lined the walls. A fire, burning in the big fireplace, made it very cheerful.

"Oh, what a darling doll-house," Maida exclaimed, pausing before the miniature mansion, very elegantly furnished.

"Oh, do you like it?" Laura beamed with pride.

"I just love it! Particularly because it's so little."

"Little!" Laura bristled. "I don't think it's so very little. It's the biggest doll-house I ever saw. Did you ever see a bigger one?"

Maida looked embarra.s.sed. "Only one."

"Whose was it?"

"It was the one my father had built for me at Pride's. It was too big to be a doll's house. It was really a small cottage. There were four rooms-two upstairs and two downstairs and a staircase that you could really walk up. But I don't like it half so well as this one,"

Maida went on truthfully. "I think it's very queer but, somehow, the smaller things are the better I like them. I guess it's because I've seen so many big things."

Laura looked impressed and puzzled at the same time. "And you really could walk up the stairs? Let's go up in the cupola," she suggested, after an uncertain interval in which she seemed to think of nothing else to show.

The stairs at the end of the playroom led into the cupola. Maida exclaimed with delight over the view which she saw from the windows.

On one side was the river with the draw-bridge, the Navy Yard and the monument on Bunker Hill. On the other stretched the smoky expanse of Boston with the golden dome of the state house gleaming in the midst of a huge, red-brick huddle.

"Did you have a cupola at Pride's Crossing?" Laura asked triumphantly.

"Oh, no-how I wish I had!"

Laura beamed again.

"Laura likes to have things other people haven't," Maida thought.

Her hostess now conducted her back over the two flights of stairs to the lower floor. They went into the dining-room, which was all s.h.i.+ning oak and glittering cut-gla.s.s; into the parlor, which was filled with gold furniture, puffily upholstered in blue brocade; into the libraries, which Maida liked best of all, because there were so many books and-

"Oh, oh, oh!" she exclaimed, stopping before one of the pictures; "that's Santa Maria in Cosmedin. I haven't seen that since I left Rome."

"How long did you stay in Rome, little girl?" a voice asked back of her. Maida turned. Mrs. Lathrop had come into the room.