CHAPTER VIITROUBLEReturn to Table of Contents
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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 showand 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 onmore 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 shecould 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. Maidastared 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 comein 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 inagain. 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 notknow 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 theBon Marché ofCharlestown?” 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-bookwith 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. Sheknelt 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 anda 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 anybodywantstosteal. 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,” hesaid, “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 catthrough 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 tosome 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 perfectlyright 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 plainstealing. 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.
CHAPTER VIIIA RAINY DAYReturn to Table of Contents
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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 itthe 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 lookedas 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 fatherand 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, growingbigger 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 struckagainst 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 withnothing 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 triedto 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 asight 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 faceand 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 entiresky. 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 hadbeen 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. Butthe 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 timesthat 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 ladywith 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, sawthe 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.”