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 [pg 150]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 [pg 157]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.
