Maida's Little Shop Part 23

They were a pretty sight. People pa.s.sing often gave them more than one glance-Rosie so vivid and sparkling, in the scarlet cape and hat all velvety jet-blacks, satiny olives and brilliant crimsons-Maida slim, delicate, fairy-like in her long squirrel-coat and cap, her airy ringlets streaming in the breeze and the eyes that had once been so wistful now s.h.i.+ning with happiness.

"Do you know what you look like, Maida?" Rosie said once. Before Maida could answer, she went on. "You look like that little mermaid princess in Anderson's fairy tales-the one who had to suffer so to get legs like mortals."

"Do I?" Maida laughed. "Now isn't it strange I have always thought that you look like somebody in a fairy tale, too. You're like Rose-Red in 'Rose-Red and Snow-White.' I think," she added, flus.h.i.+ng, for she was a little afraid that it was not polite to say things like this, "that you are the beautifulest girl I ever saw."

"Why, that's just what I think of you," Rosie said in surprise.

"I just love black hair," Maida said.

"And I just adore golden hair," Rosie said. "Now, isn't that strange?"

"I guess," Maida announced after a moment of thought, "people like what they haven't got."

After a while, Rosie taught Maida to jump in the big rope with a half a dozen children at once. Maida never tired of this. When she heard the rope swis.h.i.+ng through the air, a kind of excitement came over her. She was proud to think that she had caught the trick-that something inside would warn her when to jump-that she could be sure that this warning would not come an instant too soon or too late.

The consciousness of a new strength and a new power made a different child of her. It made her eyes sparkle like gray diamonds. It made her cheeks glow like pink peonies.

By this time she could spin tops with the best of them-sometimes she had five tops going at once. This was a sport of which the W.M.N.T.'s never tired. They kept it up long into the twilight.

Sometimes Granny would have to ring the dinner-bell a half a dozen times before Maida appeared. Maida did not mean to be disobedient.

She simply did not hear the bell. Granny's scoldings for this carelessness were very gentle-Maida's face was too radiant with her triumph in this new skill.

There was something about Primrose Court-the rows of trees welded into a yellow arch high over their heads, the sky showing through in diamond-shaped glints of blue, the tiny trim houses and their tinier, trimmer yards, the doves pink-toeing everywhere, their throats bubbling color as wonderful as the old Venetian gla.s.s in the Beacon Street house, the children running and shouting, the very smell of the dust which their pattering feet threw up-something in the look of all this made Maida's spirits leap.

"I'm happy, _happy_, HAPPY," Maida said one day. The next-Rosie came rus.h.i.+ng into the shop with a frightened face.

"Oh, Maida," she panted, "a terrible thing has happened. Laura Lathrop's got diphtheria-they say she's going to die."

"Oh, Rosie, how dreadful! Who told you so?"

"Annie the cook told Aunt Theresa. Dr. Ames went there three times yesterday. Annie says Mrs. Lathrop looks something awful."

"The poor, poor woman," Granny murmured compa.s.sionately.

"Oh, I'm so sorry I was cross to Laura," Maida said, conscience-stricken. "Oh, I do hope she won't die."

"It must be dreadful for Laura," Rosie continued, "Harold can't go near her. n.o.body goes into the room but her mother and the nurse."

The news cast a deep gloom over the Court. The little children-Betsy, Molly and Tim played as usual for they could not understand the situation. But the noisy fun of the older children ceased entirely. They gathered on the corner and talked in low voices, watching with dread any movement in the Lathrop house. For a week or more Primrose Court was the quietest spot in the neighborhood.

"They say she's sinking," Rosie said that first night.

The thought of it colored Maida's dreams.

"She's got through the night all right," Rosie reported in the morning, her face s.h.i.+ning with hope. "And they think she's a little better." But late the next afternoon, Rosie appeared again, her face dark with dread, "Laura's worse again."

Two or three days pa.s.sed. Sometimes Laura was better. Oftener she was worse. Dr. Ames's carriage seemed always to be driving into the Court.

"Annie says she's dying," Rosie retailed despairingly. "They don't think she'll live through the night. Oh, won't it be dreadful to wake up to-morrow and find the c.r.a.pe on the door."

The thought of what she might see in the morning kept Maida awake a long time that night. When she arose her first glance was for the Lathrop door. There was no c.r.a.pe.

"No better," Rosie dropped in to say on her way to school "but," she added hopefully, "she's no worse."

Maida watched the Lathrop house all day, dreading to see the undertaker's wagon drive up. But it did not come-not that day, nor the next, nor the next.

"They think she's getting better," Rosie reported joyfully one day.

And gradually Laura did get better. But it was many days before she was well enough to sit up.

"Mrs. Lathrop says," Rosie burst in one day with an excited face, "that if we all gather in front of the house to-morrow at one o'clock, she'll lift Laura up to the window so that we can see her.

She says Laura is crazy to see us all."

"Oh, Rosie, I'm so glad!" Maida exclaimed, delighted. Seizing each other by the waist, the two little girls danced about the room.

"Oh, I'm going to be so good to Laura when she gets well," Maida said.

"So am I," Rosie declared with equal fervor. "The last thing I ever said to her was that she was 'a hateful little smarty-cat.'"

Five minutes before one, the next day, all the children in Primrose Court gathered on the lawn in front of Laura's window. Maida led Molly by one hand and Tim by the other. Rosie led Betsy and Delia.

Dorothy Clark held Fluff and Mabel held Tag. Promptly at one o'clock, Mrs. Lathrop appeared at the window, carrying a little, thin, white wisp of a girl, all m.u.f.fled up in a big shawl.

The children broke into shouts of joy. The boys waved their hats and the girls their handkerchiefs. Tag barked madly and Rosie declared afterwards that even Fluff looked excited. But Maida stood still with the tears streaming down her cheeks-Laura's face looked so tiny, her eyes so big and sad. From her own experience, Maida could guess how weak Laura felt.

Laura stayed only an instant at the window. One feeble wave of her claw-like hand and she was gone.

"Annie says Mrs. Lathrop is worn to a shadow trying to find things to entertain Laura," Rosie said one night to Maida and Billy Potter.

"She's read all her books to her and played all her games with her and Laura keeps saying she wished she had something new."

"Oh, I do wish we could think of something to do for her," Maida said wistfully. "I know just how she feels. If I could only think of a new toy-but Laura has everything. And then the trouble with toys is that after you've played with them once, there's no more fun in them. I know what that is. If we all had telephones, we could talk to her once in a while. But even that would tire her, I guess."

Billy jumped. "I know what we can do for Laura," he said. "I'll have to have Mrs. Lathrop's permission though." He seized his hat and made for the door. "I'd better see her about it to-night." The door slammed.

It had all happened so suddenly that the children gazed after him with wide-open mouths and eyes.

"What do you suppose it's going to be, Maida?" Rosie asked finally.

"I don't know," Maida answered. "I haven't the least idea. But if Billy makes it, you may be sure it will be wonderful."

When Billy came back, they asked him a hundred questions. But they could not get a word out of him in regard to the new toy.

He appeared at the shop early the next morning with a suit-case full of bundles. Then followed doings that, for a long time, were a mystery to everybody. A crowd of excited children followed him about, asking him dozens of questions and chattering frantically among themselves.

First, he opened one of the bundles-out dropped eight little pulleys. Second, he went up into Maida's bedroom and fastened one of the little pulleys on the sill outside her window. Third, he did the same thing in Rosie's house, in Arthur's and in d.i.c.ky's. Fourth, he fastened four of the little pulleys at the playroom window in the Lathrop house.

"Oh, what is he doing?" "I can't think of anything." "Oh, I wish he'd tell us," came from the children who watched these manuvres from the street.

Fifth, Billy opened another bundle-this time, out came four coils of a thin rope.

"I know now," Arthur called up to him, "but I won't tell."