CHAPTER XIHALLOWEENReturn to Table of Contents
Return to Table of Contents
Halloween fell on Saturday that year. That made Friday a very busy time for Maida and the other members of the W.M.N.T. In the afternoon, they all worked like beavers making jack-o’-lanterns of the dozen pumpkins that Granny had ordered. Maida and Rosie and Dicky hollowed and scraped them. Arthur did all the hard work—the cutting out of the features, the putting-in of candle-holders. These pumpkin lanterns were for decoration. But Maida had ordered many paper jack-o’-lanterns for sale. The W.M.N.T.’s spent the evening rearranging the shop. Maida went to bed so tired that she could hardly drag one foot after the other. Granny had to undress her.
But when the school-children came flocking in the next morning, she felt more than repaid for her work. The shop resoundedwith the “Oh mys,” and “Oh looks,” of their surprise and delight.
Indeed, the room seemed full of twinkling yellow faces. Lines of them grinned in the doorway. Rows of them smirked from the shelves. A frieze, close-set as peas in a pod, grimaced from the molding. The jolly-looking pumpkin jacks, that Arthur had made, were piled in a pyramid in the window. The biggest of them all—“he looks just like the man in the moon,” Rosie said—smiled benignantly at the passers-by from the top of the heap. Standing about everywhere among the lanterns were groups of little paper brownies, their tiny heads turned upwards as if, in the greatest astonishment, they were examining these monster beings.
The jack-o’-lanterns sold like hot cakes. As for the brownies, “Granny, you’d think they were marching off the shelves!” Maida said. By dark, she was diving breathlessly into her surplus stock. At the first touch of twilight, she lighted every lantern left in the place. Five minutes afterwards, a crowd of children had gathered to gaze at the flaming faces in the window. Even the grown-ups stopped to admire the effect.
More customers came and more—a great many children whom Maida had never seen before. By six o’clock, she had sold out her entire stock. When she sat down to dinner that night, she was a very happy little girl.
“This is the best day I’ve had since I opened the shop,” she said contentedly. She was not tired, though. “I feel just like going to a party to-night. Granny, can I wear my prettiest Roman sash?”
“You can wear annyt’ing you want, my lamb,” Granny said, “for ’tis the good, busy little choild you’ve been this day.”
Granny dressed her according to Maida’s choice, in white. A very, simple, soft little frock, it was, with many tiny tucks made by hand and many insertions of a beautiful, fine lace. Maida chose to wear with it pale blue silk stockings and slippers, a sash of blue, striped in pink and white, a string of pink Venetian beads.
“Now, Granny, I’ll read until the children call for me,” she suggested, “so I won’t rumple my dress.”
But she was too excited to read. She sat for a long time at the window, just looking out. Presently the jack-o’-lanterns, lightednow, began to make blobs of gold in the furry darkness of the street. She could not at first make out who held them. It was strange to watch the fiery, grinning heads, flying, bodiless, from place to place. But she identified the lanterns in the court by the houses from which they emerged. The three small ones on the end at the left meant Dicky and Molly and Tim. Two big ones, mounted on sticks, came from across the way—Rosie and Arthur, of course. Two, just alike, trotting side by side betrayed the Clark twins. A baby-lantern, swinging close to the ground—that could be nobody but Betsy.
The crowd in the Court began to march towards the shop. For an instant, Maida watched the spots of brilliant color dancing in her direction. Then she slipped into her coat, and seized her own lantern. When she came outside, the sidewalk seemed crowded with grotesque faces, all laughing at her.
“Just think,” she said, “I have never been to a Halloween party in my life.”
“You are the queerest thing, Maida,” Rosie said in perplexity. “You’ve been to Europe. You can talk French and Italian.And yet, you’ve never been to a Halloween party. Did you ever hang May-baskets?”
Maida shook her head.
“You wait until next May,” Rosie prophesied gleefully.
The crowd crossed over into the Court Two motionless, yellow faces, grinning at them from the Lathrop steps, showed that Laura and Harold had come out to meet them. On the lawn they broke into an impromptu game of tag which the jack-o’-lanterns seemed to enjoy as much as the children: certainly, they whizzed from place to place as quickly and, certainly, they smiled as hard.
The game ended, they left their lanterns on the piazza and trooped into the house.
“We’ve got to play the first games in the kitchen,” Laura announced after the coats and hats had come off and Mrs. Lathrop had greeted them all.
Maida wondered what sort of party it was that was held in the kitchen but she asked no questions. Almost bursting with curiosity, she joined the long line marching to the back of the house.
In the middle of the kitchen floor stood a tub of water with apples floating in it.
“Bobbing for apples!” the children exclaimed. “Oh, that’s the greatest fun of all. Did you ever bob for apples, Maida?”
“No.”
“Let Maida try it first, then,” Laura said. “It’s very easy, Maida,” she went on with twinkling eyes. “All you have to do is to kneel on the floor, clasp your hands behind you, and pick out one of the apples with your teeth. You’ll each be allowed three minutes.”
“Oh, I can get a half a dozen in three minutes, I guess,” Maida said.
Laura tied a big apron around Maida’s waist and stood, watch in hand. The children gathered in a circle about the tub. Maida knelt on the floor, clasped her hands behind her and reached with a wide-open mouth for the nearest apple. But at the first touch of her lips, the apple bobbed away. She reached for another. That bobbed away, too. Another and another and another—they all bobbed clean out of her reach, no matter how delicately she touched them. That method was unsuccessful.
“One minute,” called Laura.
Maida could hear the children giggling ather. She tried another scheme, making vicious little dabs at the apples. Her beads and her hair-ribbon and one of her long curls dipped into the water. But she only succeeded in sending the apples spinning across the tub.
“Two minutes!” called Laura.
“Why don’t you get those half a dozen,” the children jeered. “You know you said it was so easy.”
Maida giggled too. But inwardly, she made up her mind that she would get one of those apples if she dipped her whole head into the tub. At last a brilliant idea occurred to her. Using her chin as a guide, she poked a big rosy apple over against the side of the tub. Wedging it there against another big apple, she held it tight. Then she dropped her head a little, gave a sudden big bite and arose amidst applause, with the apple secure between her teeth.
After that she had the fun of watching the other children. The older ones were adepts. In three minutes, Rosie secured four, Dicky five and Arthur six. Rosie did not get a drop of water on her but the boys emerged with dripping heads. The littlechildren were not very successful but they were more fun. Molly swallowed so much water that she choked and had to be patted on the back. Betsy after a few snaps of her little, rosebud mouth, seized one of the apples with her hand, sat down on the floor and calmly ate it. But the climax was reached when Tim Doyle suddenly lurched forward and fell headlong into the tub.
“I knew he’d fall in,” Molly said in a matter-of-fact voice. “He always falls into everything. I brought a dry set of clothes for him. Come, Tim!”
At this announcement, everybody shrieked. Molly disappeared with Tim in the direction of Laura’s bedroom. When she reappeared, sure enough, Tim had a dry suit on.
Next Laura ordered them to sit about the kitchen-table. She gave each child an apple and a knife and directed him to pare the apple without breaking the peel. If you think that is an easy thing to do, try it. It seemed to Maida that she never would accomplish it. She spoiled three apples before she succeeded.
“Now take your apple-paring and formin line across the kitchen-floor,” Laura commanded.
The flock scampered to obey her.
“Now when I say ‘Three!’” she continued, “throw the parings back over your shoulder to the floor. If the paring makes a letter, it will be the initial of your future husband or wife. One!Two! THREE!”
A dozen apple-parings flew to the floor. Everybody raced across the room to examine the results.
“Mine is B,” Dicky said.
“And mine’s an O,” Rosie declared, “as plain as anything. What’s yours, Maida?”
“It’s an X,” Maida answered in great perplexity. “I don’t believe that there are any names beginning with X except Xenophon and Xerxes.”
“Well, mine’s as bad,” Laura laughed, “it’s a Z. I guess I’ll be Mrs. Zero.”
“That’s nothing,” Arthur laughed, “mine’s an &—I can’t marry anybody named ——‘and.’”
“Well, if that isn’t successful,” Laura said, “there’s another way of finding out who your husband or wife’s going to be. You must walk down the cellar-stairs backwardswith a candle in one hand and a mirror in the other. You must look in the mirror all the time and, when you get to the foot of the stairs, you will see, reflected in it, the face of your husband or wife.”
This did not interest the little children but the big ones were wild to try it.
“Gracious, doesn’t it sound scary?” Rosie said, her great eyes snapping. “I love a game that’s kind of spooky, don’t you, Maida?”
Maida did not answer. She was watching Harold who was sneaking out of the room very quietly from a door at the side.
“All right, then, Rosie,” Laura caught her up, “you can go first.”
The children all crowded over to the door leading to the cellar. The stairs were as dark as pitch. Rosie took the mirror and the candle that Laura handed her and slipped through the opening. The little audience listened breathless.
They heard Rosie stumble awkwardly down the stairs, heard her pause at the foot. Next came a moment of silence, of waiting as tense above as below. Then came a burst of Rosie’s jolly laughter.She came running up to them, her cheeks like roses, her eyes like stars.
They crowded around her. “What did you see?” “Tell us about it?” they clamored.
Rosie shook her head. “No, no, no,” she maintained, “I’m not going to tell you what I saw until you’ve been down yourself.”
It was Arthur’s turn next. They listened again. The same thing happened—awkward stumbling down the stairs, a pause, then a roar of laughter.
“Oh what did you see?” they implored when he reappeared.
“Try it yourself!” he advised. “I’m not going to tell.”
Dicky went next. Again they all listened and to the same mysterious doings. Dicky came back smiling but, like the others, he refused to describe his experiences.
Now it was Maida’s turn. She took the candle and the mirror from Dicky and plunged into the shivery darkness of the stairs. It was doubly difficult for her to go down backwards because of her lameness. But she finally arrived at the bottom andstood there expectantly. It seemed a long time before anything happened. Suddenly, she felt something stir back of her. A lighted jack-o’-lantern came from between the folds of a curtain which hung from the ceiling. It grinned over her shoulder at her face in the mirror.
Maida burst into a shriek of laughter and scrambled upstairs. “I’m going to marry a jack-o’-lantern,” she said. “My name’s going to be Mrs. Jack Pumpkin.”
“I’m going to marry Laura’s sailor-doll,” Rosie confessed. “My name is Mrs. Yankee Doodle.”
“I’m going to marry Laura’s big doll, Queenie,” Arthur admitted.
“And I’m going to marry Harold’s Teddy-bear,” Dicky said.
After that they blew soap-bubbles and roasted apples and chestnuts, popped corn and pulled candy at the great fireplace in the playroom. And at Maida’s request, just before they left, Laura danced for them.
“Will you help me to get on my costume, Maida?” Laura asked.
“Of course,” Maida said, wondering.
“I asked you to come down here, Maida,”Laura said when the two little girls were alone, “because I wanted to tell you that I am sorry for the way I treated you just before I got diphtheria. I told my mother about it and she said I did those things because I was coming down sick. She said that people are always fretty and cross when they’re not well. But I don’t think it was all that. I guess I did it on purpose just to be disagreeable. But I hope you will excuse me.”
“Of course I will, Laura,” Maida said heartily. “And I hope you will forgive me for going so long without speaking to you. But you see I heard,” she stopped and hesitated, “things,” she ended lamely.
“Oh, I know what you heard. I said those things about you to the W.M.N.T.’s so that they’d get back to you. I wanted to hurt your feelings.” Laura in her turn stopped and hesitated for an instant. “I was jealous,” she finally confessed in a burst. “But I want you to understand this, Maida. I didn’t believe those horrid things myself. I always have a feeling inside when people are telling lies and I didn’t have that feeling when you were talking to me. I knew you were telling thetruth. And all the time while I was getting well, I felt so dreadfully about it that I knew I never would be happy again unless I told you so.”
“I did feel bad when I heard those things,” Maida said, “but of course I forgot about them when Rosie told me you were ill. Let’s forget all about it again.”
But Maida told the W.M.N.T.’s something of her talk with Laura and the result was an invitation to Laura to join the club. It was accepted gratefully.
The next month went by on wings. It was a busy month although in a way, it was an uneventful one. The weather kept clear and fine. Little rain fell but, on the other hand, to the great disappointment of the little people of Primrose Court, there was no snow. Maida saw nothing of her father for business troubles kept him in New York. He wrote constantly to her and she wrote as faithfully to him. Letters could not quite fill the gap that his absence made. Perhaps Billy suspected Maida’s secret loneliness for he came oftener and oftener to see her.
One night the W.M.N.T.’s begged so hard for a story that he finally began onecalled “The Crystal Ball.” A wonderful thing about it was that it was half-game and half-story. Most wonderful of all, it went on from night to night and never showed any signs of coming to an end. But in order to play this game-story, there were two or three conditions to which you absolutely must submit. For instance, it must always be played in the dark. And first, everybody must shut his eyes tight. Billy would say in a deep voice, “Abracadabra!” and, presto, there they all were, Maida, Rosie, Laura, Billy, Arthur and Dicky inside the crystal ball. What people lived there and what things happened to them can not be told here. But after an hour or more, Billy’s deepest voice would boom, “Abracadabra!” again and, presto, there they all were again, back in the cheerful living-room.
Maida hoped against hope that her father would come to spend Thanksgiving with her but that, he wrote finally, was impossible. Billy came, however, and they three enjoyed one of Granny’s delicious turkey dinners.
“I hoped that I would have found your daughter Annie by this time, Granny,”Billy said. “I ask every Irishman I meet if he came from Aldigarey, County Sligo or if he knows anybody who did, or if he’s ever met a pretty Irish girl by the name of Annie Flynn. But I’ll find her yet—you’ll see.”
“I hope so, Misther Billy,” Granny said respectfully. But Maida thought her voice sounded as if she had no great hope.
Dicky still continued to come for his reading-lessons, although Maida could see that, in a month or two, he would not need a teacher. The quiet, studious, pale little boy had become a great favorite with Granny Flynn.
“Sure an’ Oi must be after getting over to see the poor lad’s mother some noight,” she said. “’Tis a noice woman she must be wid such a pretty-behaved little lad.”
“Oh, she is, Granny,” Maida said earnestly. “I’ve been there once or twice when Mrs. Dore came home early. And she’s just the nicest lady and so fond of Dicky and the baby.”
But Granny was old and very easily tired and, so, though her intentions were of the best, she did not make this call.
One afternoon, after Thanksgiving,Maida ran over to Dicky’s to borrow some pink tissue paper. She knocked gently. Nobody answered. But from the room came the sound of sobbing. Maida listened. It was Dicky’s voice. At first she did not know what to do. Finally, she opened the door and peeped in. Dicky was sitting all crumpled up, his head resting on the table.
“Oh, what is the matter, Dicky?” Maida asked.
Dicky jumped. He raised his head and looked at her. His face was swollen with crying, his eyes red and heavy. For a moment he could not speak. Maida could see that he was ashamed of being caught in tears, that he was trying hard to control himself.
“It’s something I heard,” he replied at last.
“What?” Maida asked.
“Last night after I got to bed, Doc O’Brien came here to get his bill paid. Mother thought I was asleep and asked him a whole lot of questions. He told her that I wasn’t any better and I never would be any better. He said that I’d be a cripple for the rest of my life.”
In spite of all his efforts, Dicky’s voice broke into a sob.
“Oh Dicky, Dicky,” Maida said. Better than anybody else in the world, Maida felt that she could understand, could sympathize. “Oh, Dicky, how sorry I am!”
“I can’t bear it,” Dicky said.
He put his head down on the table and began to sob. “I can’t bear it,” he said. “Why, I thought when I grew up to be a man, I was going to take care of mother and Delia. Instead of that, they’ll be taking care of me. What can a cripple do? Once I read about a crippled newsboy. Do you suppose I could sell papers?” he asked with a gleam of hope.
“I’m sure you could,” Maida said heartily, “and a great many other things. But it may not be as bad as you think, Dicky. Dr. O’Brien may be mistaken. You know something was wrong with me when I was born and I did not begin to walk until a year ago. My father has taken me to so many doctors that I’m sure he could not remember half their names. But they all said the same thing—that I never would walk like other children. Then a very great physician—Dr. Greinschmidt—camefrom away across the sea, from Germany. He said he could cure me and he did. I had to be operated on and—oh—I suffered dreadfully. But you see that I’m all well now. I’m even losing my limp. Now, I believe that Doctor Greinschmidt can cure you. The next time my father comes home I’m going to ask him.”
Dicky had stopped crying. He was drinking down everything that she said. “Is he still here—that doctor?” he asked.
“No,” Maida admitted sorrowfully. “But there must be doctors as good as he somewhere. But don’t you worry about it at all, Dicky. You wait until my father sees you—he always gets everything made right.”
“When’s your father coming home?”
“I don’t quite know—but I look for him any time now.”
Dicky started to set the table. “I guess I wouldn’t have cried,” he said after a while, “if I could have cried last night when I first heard it. But of course I couldn’t let mother or Doc O’Brien know that I’d heard them—it would make them feel bad. I don’t want my mother ever to know that I know it.”
After that, Maida redoubled her efforts to be nice to Dicky. She cudgeled her brains too for new decorative schemes for his paper-work. She asked Billy Potter to bring a whole bag of her books from the Beacon Street house and she lent them to Dicky, a half dozen at a time.
Indeed, they were a very busy quartette—the W.M.N.T.’s. Rosie went to school every day. She climbed out of her window no more at night. She seemed to prefer helping Maida in the shop to anything else. Arthur Duncan was equally industrious. With no Rosie to play hookey with, he, too, was driven to attending school regularly. His leisure hours were devoted to his whittling and wood-carving. He was always doing kind things for Maida and Granny, bringing up the coal, emptying the ashes, running errands.
And so November passed into December.
CHAPTER XIITHE FIRST SNOWReturn to Table of Contents
Return to Table of Contents
“Look out the window, my lamb,” Granny called one morning early in December. Maida opened her eyes, jumped obediently out of bed and pattered across the room. There, she gave a scream of delight, jumping up and down and clapping her hands.
“Snow! Oh goody, goody, goody! Snow at last!”
It looked as if the whole world had been wrapped in a blanket of the whitest, fleeciest, shiningest wool. Sidewalks, streets, crossings were all leveled to one smoothness. The fences were so muffled that they had swelled to twice their size. The houses wore trim, pointy caps on their gables. The high bushes in the yard hung to the very ground. The low ones had become mounds. The trees looked as if they had been packed in cotton-wool and put away for the winter.
“And the lovely part of it is, it’s still snowing,” Maida exclaimed blissfully.
“Glory be, it’ull be a blizzard before we’re t’rough wid ut,” Granny said and shivered.
Maida dressed in the greatest excitement. Few children came in to make purchases that morning and the lines pouring into the schoolhouse were very shivery and much shorter than usual. At a quarter to twelve, the one-session bell rang. When the children came out of school at one, the snow was whirling down thicker and faster than in the morning. A high wind came up and piled it in the most unexpected places. Trade stopped entirely in the shop. No mother would let her children brave so terrific a storm.
It snowed that night and all the next morning. The second day fewer children went to school than on the first. But at two o’clock when the sun burst through the gray sky, the children swarmed the streets. Shovels and brooms began to appear, snow-balls to fly, sleigh-bells to tinkle.
Rosie came dashing into the shop in the midst of this burst of excitement. “I’ve shoveled our sidewalk,” she announced triumphantly.“Is anything wrong with me? Everybody’s staring at me.”
Maida stared too. Rosie’s scarlet cape was dotted with snow, her scarlet hat was white with it. Great flakes had caught in her long black hair, had starred her soft brows—they hung from her very eyelashes. Her cheeks and lips were the color of coral and her eyes like great velvety moons.
“You look in the glass and see what they’re staring at,” Maida said slyly. Rosie went to the mirror.
“I don’t see anything the matter.”
“It’s because you look so pretty, goose!” Maida exclaimed.
Rosie always blushed and looked ashamed if anybody alluded to her prettiness. Now she leaped to Maida’s side and pretended to beat her.
“Stop that!” a voice called. Startled, the little girls looked up. Billy stood in the doorway. “I’ve come over to make a snow-house,” he explained.
“Oh, Billy, what things you do think of!” Maida exclaimed. “Wait till I get Arthur and Dicky!”
“Couldn’t get many more in here, could we?” Billy commented when the five hadassembled in the “child’s size” yard. “I don’t know that we could stow away another shovel. Now, first of all, you’re to pile all the snow in the yard into that corner.”
Everybody went to work. But Billy and Arthur moved so quickly with their big shovels that Maida and Rosie and Dicky did nothing but hop about them. Almost before they realized it, the snow-pile reached to the top of the fence.
“Pack it down hard,” Billy commanded, “as hard as you can make it.”
Everybody scrambled to obey. For a few moments the sound of shovels beating on the snow drowned their talk.
“That will do for that,” Billy commanded suddenly. His little force stopped, breathless and red-cheeked. “Now I’m going to dig out the room. I guess I’ll have to do this. If you’re not careful enough, the roof will cave in. Then it’s all got to be done again.”
Working very slowly, he began to hollow out the structure. After the hole had grown big enough, he crawled into it. But in spite of his own warning, he must havebeen too energetic in his movements. Suddenly the roof came down on his head.
Billy was on his feet in an instant, shaking the snow off as a dog shakes off water.
“Why, Billy, you look like a snow-man,” Maida laughed.
“I feel like one,” Billy said, wiping the snow from his eyes and from under his collar. “But don’t be discouraged, my hearties, up with it again. I’ll be more careful the next time.”
They went at it again with increased interest, heaping up a mound of snow bigger than before, beating it until it was as hard as a brick, hollowing out inside a chamber big enough for three of them to occupy at once. But Billy gave them no time to enjoy their new dwelling.
“Run into the house,” was his next order, “and bring out all the water you can carry.”
There was a wild scramble to see which would get to the sink first but in a few moments, an orderly file emerged from the house, Arthur with a bucket, Dicky with a basin, Rosie with the dish-pan, Maida with a dipper.
“Now I’m going to pour water over the house,” Billy explained. “You see if it freezes now it will last longer.” Very carefully, he sprayed it on the sides and roof, dashing it upwards on the inside walls:
“We might as well make it look pretty while we’re about it,” Billy continued. “You children get to work and make a lot of snow-balls the size of an orange and just as round as you can turn them out.”
This was easy work. Before Billy could say, “Jack Robinson!” four pairs of eager hands had accumulated snow-balls enough for a sham battle. In the meantime, Billy had decorated the doorway with two tall, round pillars. He added a pointed roof to the house and trimmed it with snow-balls, all along the edge.
“Now I guess we’d better have a snow-man to live in this mansion while we’re about it,” Billy suggested briskly. “Each of you roll up an arm or a leg while I make the body.”
Billy placed the legs in the corner opposite the snow-house. He lifted on to them the big round body which he himselfhad rolled. Putting the arms on was not so easy. He worked for a long time before he found the angle at which they would stick.
Everybody took a hand at the head. Maida contributed some dulse for the hair, slitting it into ribbons, which she stuck on with glue. Rosie found a broken clothes-pin for the nose. The round, smooth coals that Dicky discovered in the coal-hod made a pair of expressive black eyes. Arthur cut two sets of teeth from orange peel and inserted them in the gash that was the mouth. When the head was set on the shoulders, Billy disappeared into the house for a moment. He came back carrying a suit-case. “Shut your eyes, every manjack of you,” he ordered. “You’re not to see what I do until it’s done. If I catch one of you peeking, I’ll confine you in the snow-house for five minutes.”
The W.M.N.T.’s shut their eyes tight and held down the lids with resolute fingers. But they kept their ears wide open. The mysterious work on which Billy was engaged was accompanied by the most tantalizing noises.
“Oh, Billy, can’t I please look,” Maida begged, jiggling up and down. “I can’t stand it much longer.”
“In a minute,” Billy said encouragingly. The mysterious noises kept up. “Now,” Billy said suddenly.
Four pairs of eyes leaped open. Four pairs of lips shrieked their delight. Indeed, Maida and Rosie laughed so hard that they finally rolled in the snow.
Billy had put an old coat on the snow-man’s body. He had put a tall hat—Arthur called it a “stove-pipe”—on the snow-man’s head. He had put an old black pipe between the snow-man’s grinning, orange-colored teeth. Gloves hung limply from the snow-man’s arm-stumps and to one of them a cane was fastened. Billy had managed to give the snow-man’s head a cock to one side. Altogether he looked so spruce and jovial that it was impossible not to like him.
“Mr. Chumpleigh, ladies and gentlemen,” Billy said. “Some members of the W.M.N.T., Mr. Chumpleigh.”
And Mr. Chumpleigh, he was until—until—
Billy stayed that night to dinner. Theyhad just finished eating when an excited ring of the bell announced Rosie.
“Oh, Granny,” she said, “the boys have made a most wonderful coast down Halliwell Street and Aunt Theresa says I can go coasting until nine o’clock if you’ll let Maida go too. I thought maybe you would, especially if Billy comes along.”
“If Misther Billy goes, ’twill be all roight.”
“Oh, Granny,” Maida said, “you dear, darling, old fairy-dame!” She was so excited that she wriggled like a little eel all the time Granny was bundling her into her clothes. And when she reached the street, it seemed as if she must explode.
A big moon, floating like a silver balloon in the sky, made the night like day. The neighborhood sizzled with excitement for the street and sidewalks were covered with children dragging sleds.
“It’s like the‘Pied Piper’, Rosie,” Maida said joyfully, “children everywhere and all going in the same direction.”
They followed the procession up Warrington Street to where Halliwell Street sloped down the hill.
Billy let out a long whistle of astonishment.“Great Scott, what a coast!” he said.
In the middle of the street was a ribbon of ice three feet wide and as smooth as glass. At the foot of the hill, a piled-up mound of snow served as a buffer.
“The boys have been working on the slide all day,” Rosie said. “Did you ever see such a nice one, Maida?”
“I never saw any kind of a one,” Maida confessed. “How did they make it so smooth?”
“Pouring water on it.”
“Have you never coasted before, Maida?” Billy asked.
“Never.”
“Well, here’s your chance then,” said a cheerful voice back of them. They all turned. There stood Arthur Duncan with what Maida soon learned was a “double-runner.”
Billy examined it carefully. “Did you make it, Arthur?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty good piece of work,” Billy commented. “Want to try it, Maida?”
“I’m crazy to!”
“All right. Pile on!”
Arthur took his place in front. Rosie sat next, then Dicky, then Maida, then Billy.
“Hold on to Dicky,” Billy instructed Maida, “and I’ll hold on to you.”
Tingling with excitement, Maida did as she was told. But it seemed as if they would never start. But at last, she heard Billy’s voice, “On your marks. Get set! Go!” The double-runner stirred.
It moved slowly for a moment across the level top of the street. Then came the first slope of the hill—they plunged forward. She heard Rosie’s hysterical shriek, Dicky’s vociferous cheers and Billy’s blood-curdling yells, but she herself was as silent as a little image. They struck the second slope of the hill—then she screamed, too. The houses on either side shot past like pictures in the kinetoscope. She felt a rush of wind that must surely blow her ears off. They reached the third slope of the hill—and now they had left the earth and were sailing through the air. The next instant the double-runner had come to rest on the bank of snow and Rosie and she were hugging each other and saying, “Wasn’t it GREAT?”
They climbed to the top of the hill again. All the way back, Maida watched the sleds whizzing down the coast, boys alone on sleds, girls alone on sleds, pairs of girls, pairs of boys, one seated in front, the other steering with a foot that trailed behind on the ice, timid little girls who did not dare the ice but contented themselves with sliding on the snow at either side, daring little boys who went down lying flat on their sleds.
At the top they were besieged with entreaties to go on the double-runner and, as there was room enough for one more, they took a little boy or girl with them each time. Rosie lent her sled to those who had none. At first there were plenty of these, standing at the top of the coast, wistfully watching the fun of more fortunate children. But after a while it was discovered that the ice was so smooth that almost anything could be used for coasting. The sledless ones rushed home and reappeared with all kinds of things. One little lad went down on a shovel and his intrepid little sister followed on a broom. Boxes and shingles and even dish-pans began to appear. Most reckless of all, one big fellow slid down on his two feet, landing in a heap in the snow.
Maida enjoyed every moment of it—even the long walks back up the hill. Once the double-runner struck into a riderless sled that had drifted on to the course, and was overturned immediately. Nobody was hurt. Rosie, Dicky and Arthur were cast safely to one side in the soft snow. But Maida and Billy were thrown, whirling, on to the ice. Billy kept his grip on Maida and they shot down the hill, turning round and round and round. At first Maida was a little frightened. But when she saw that they were perfectly safe, that Billy was making her spin about in that ridiculous fashion, she laughed so hard that she was weak when they reached the bottom.
“Oh, do let’s do that again!” she said when she caught her breath.
Never was such a week as followed. The cold weather kept up. Continued storms added to the snow. For the first time in years came four one-session days in a single week. It seemed as if Jack Frost were on the side of the children. He would send violent flurries of snow just before the one-session bell rang but as soon as the children were safely on the street, the sun would come out bright as summer.
Every morning when Maida woke up, she would say to herself, “I wonder how Mr. Chumpleigh is to-day.” Then she would run over to the window to see.
Mr. Chumpleigh had become a great favorite in the neighborhood. He was so tall that his round, happy face with its eternal orange-peel grin could look straight over the fence to the street. The passers-by used to stop, paralyzed by the vision. But after studying the phenomenon, they would go laughing on their way. Occasionally a bad boy would shy a snow-ball at the smiling countenance but Mr. Chumpleigh was so hard-headed that nothing seemed to hurt him. In the course of time, the “stove-pipe” became very battered and, as the result of continued storms, one eye sank down to the middle of his cheek. But in spite of these injuries, he continued to maintain his genial grin.
“Let’s go out and fix Mr. Chumpleigh,” Rosie would say every day. The two little girls would brush the snow off his hat and coat, adjust his nose and teeth, would straighten him up generally.
After a while, Maida threw her bird-crumbs all over Mr. Chumpleigh. Thereafter,the saucy little English sparrows ate from Mr. Chumpleigh’s hat-brim, his pipe-bowl, even his pockets.
“Perhaps the snow will last all winter,” Maida said hopefully one day. “If it does, Mr. Chumpleigh’s health will be perfect.”
“Well, perhaps, it’s just as well if he goes,” Rosie said sensibly; “we haven’t done a bit of work since he came.”
On Sunday the weather moderated a little. Mr. Chumpleigh bore a most melancholy look all the afternoon as if he feared what was to come. What was worse, he lost his nose.
Monday morning, Maida ran to the window dreading what she might see. But instead of the thaw she expected, a most beautiful sight spread out before her. The weather had turned cold in the night. Everything that had started to melt had frozen up again. The sidewalks were liked frosted cakes. Long icicles made pretty fringes around the roofs of the houses. The trees and bushes were glazed by a sheathing of crystal. The sunlight playing through all this turned the world into a heap of diamonds.
Mr. Chumpleigh had perked up under theinfluence of the cold. His manner had gained in solidity although his gaze was a little glassy. Hopefully Maida hunted about until she found his nose.
She replaced his old set with some new orange-peel teeth and stuck his pipe between them. He looked quite himself.
But, alas, the sun came out and melted the whole world. The sidewalks trickled streams. The icicles dripped away in showers of diamonds. The trees lost their crystal sheathing.
In the afternoon, Mr. Chumpleigh began to droop. By night his head was resting disconsolately on his own shoulder. When Maida looked out the next morning, there was nothing in the corner but a mound of snow. An old coat lay to one side. Strewn about were a hat, a pair of gloves, a pipe and a cane.
Mr. Chumpleigh had passed away in the night.
CHAPTER XIIITHE FAIRReturn to Table of Contents
Return to Table of Contents
SAVE YOUR PENNIESA CHRISTMAS FAIRWILL BE HELD IN THIS SHOPTHE SATURDAY BEFORECHRISTMASDELICIOUS CANDIES MADE BYMISS ROSIE BRINEPAPER GOODS DESIGNED ANDEXECUTED BYMASTER RICHARD DOREWOOD CARVING DESIGNED ANDEXECUTED BYMASTER ARTHUR DUNCANDON'T MISS IT!
This sign hung in Maida’s window for a week. Billy made it. The lettering was red and gold. In one corner, he painted a picture of a little boy and girl in their nightgowns peeking up a chimney-place hung with stockings. In the othercorner, the full-moon face of a Santa Claus popped like a jolly jack-in-the-box from a chimney-top. A troop of reindeer, dragging a sleigh full of toys, scurried through the printing. The whole thing was enclosed in a wreath of holly.
The sign attracted a great deal of attention. Children were always stopping to admire it and even grown-people paused now and then. There was such a falling-off of Maida’s trade that she guessed that the children were really saving their pennies for the fair. This delighted her.
The W.M.N.T.’s wasted no time that last week in spite of a very enticing snowstorm. Maida, of course, had nothing to do on her own account, but she worked with Dicky, morning and afternoon.
Rosie could not make candy until the last two or three days for fear it would get stale. Then she set to like a little whirlwind.
“My face is almost tanned from bending over the stove,” she said to Maida; “Aunt Theresa says if I cook another batch of candy, I’ll have a crop of freckles.”
Arthur seemed to work the hardest of all because his work was so much more difficult. It took a great deal of time andstrength and yet nobody could help him in it. The sound of his hammering came into Maida’s room early in the morning. It came in sometimes late at night when, cuddling between her blankets, she thought what a happy girl she was.
“I niver saw such foine, busy little folks,” Granny said approvingly again and again. “It moinds me av me own Annie. Niver a moment but that lass was working at some t’ing. Oh, I wonder what she’s doun’ and finking this Christmas.”
“Don’t you worry,” Maida always said. “Billy’ll find her for you yet—he said he would.”
Maida, herself, was giving, for the first time in her experience, a good deal of thought to Christmas time.
In the first place, she had sent the following invitation to every child in Primrose Court:
“Will you please come to my Christmas Tree to be given Christmas Night in the‘Little Shop.’Maida.”
In the second place, she was spying on all her friends, listening to their talk, watchingthem closely in work and play to find just the right thing to give them.
“Do you know, I never made a Christmas present in my life,” she said one day to Rosie.
“You never made a Christmas present?” Rosie repeated.
Maida’s quick perception sensed in Rosie’s face an unspoken accusation of selfishness.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, Rosie dear,” Maida hastened to explain. “It was because I was too sick. You see, I was always in bed. I was too weak to make anything and I could not go out and buy presents as other children did. But people used to give me the loveliest things.”
“What did they give you?” Rosie asked curiously.
“Oh, all kinds of things. Father’s given me an automobile and a pair of Shetland ponies and a family of twenty dolls and my weight in silver dollars. I can’t remember half the things I’ve had.”
“A pair of Shetland ponies, an automobile, a family of twenty dolls, your weight in silver dollars,” Rosie repeated after her. “Why, Maida, you’re dreaming or you’re out of your head.”
“Out of my head! Why, Rosie you’re out ofyourhead. Don’t you suppose I know what I got for Christmas?” Maida’s eyes began to flash and her lips to tremble.
“Well, now, Maida, just think of it,” Rosie said in her most reasonable voice. “Here you are a little girl just like anybody else only you’re running a shop. Now just as if you could afford to have an automobile! Why, my father knows a man who knows another man who bought an automobile and it cost nine hundred dollars. What did yours cost?”
“Two thousand dollars.” Maida said this with a guilty air in spite of her knowledge of her own truth.
Rosie smiled roguishly. “Maida, dear,” she coaxed, “you dreamed it.”
Maida started to her feet. For a moment she came near saying something very saucy indeed. But she remembered in time. Of course nobody in the neighborhood knew that she was “Buffalo” Westabrook’s daughter. It was impossible for her to prove any of her statements. The flash died out of her eyes. But another flash came into her cheeks—the flash of dimples.
“Well, perhaps Ididdream it, Rosie,”she said archly. “But I don’t think I did,” she added in a quiet voice.
Rosie turned the subject tactfully. “What are you going to give your father?” she asked.
“That’s bothering me dreadfully,” Maida sighed; “I can’t think of anything he needs.”
“Why don’t you buy him the same thing I’m going to get my papa,” Rosie suggested eagerly. “That is, I’m going to buy it if I make enough money at the fair. Does your father shave himself?”
“Oh, Adolph, his valet, always shaves him,” Maida answered.
Rosie’s brow knit over the wordvalet—but Maida was always puzzling the neighborhood with strange expressions. Then her brow lightened. “My father goes to a barber, too,” she said. “I’ve heard him complaining lots of times how expensive it is. And the other day Arthur told me about a razor his father uses. He says it’s just like a lawn-mower or a carpet-sweeper. You don’t have to have anybody shave you if you have one of them. You run it right over your face and it takes all the beard offand doesn’t cut or anything. Now, wouldn’t you think that would be fun?”
“I should think it would be just lovely,” Maida agreed. “That’s just the thing for papa—for he is so busy. How much does it cost, Rosie?”
“About a dollar, Arthur thought. I never paid so much for a Christmas present in my life. And I’m not sure yet that I can get one. But if I do sell two dollars worth of candy, I can buy something perfectly beautiful for both father and mother.”
“Oh, Rosie,” Maida asked breathlessly, “do you mean that your mother’s come back?”
Rosie’s face changed. “Don’t you think I’d tell you that the first thing? No, she hasn’t come back and they don’t say anything about her coming back. But if she ever does come, I guess I’m going to have her Christmas present all ready for her.”
Maida patted her hand. “She’s coming back,” she said; “I know it.”
Rosie sighed. “You come down Main Street the night before Christmas. Dicky and I are going to buy our Christmas presentsthen and we can show you where to get the little razor.”
“I’d love to.” Maida beamed. And indeed, it seemed the most fascinating prospect in the world to her. Every night after she went to bed, she thought it over. She was really going to buy Christmas presents without any grown-up person about to interfere. It was rapture.
The night before the fair, the children worked even harder than the night before Halloween, for there were so many things to display. It was evident that the stock would overflow windows and shelves and show cases.
“We’ll bring the long kitchen table in for your things, Arthur,” Maida decided after a perplexed consideration of the subject. “Dicky’s and Rosie’s things ought to go on the shelves and into the show cases where nobody can handle them.”
They tugged the table into the shop and covered it with a beautiful old blue counter-pane.
“That’s fine!” Arthur approved, unpacking his handicraft from the bushel-baskets in which he brought them.
The others stood round admiring thetreasures and helping him to arrange them prettily. A fleet of graceful little boats occupied one end of the table, piles of bread-boards, rolling-pins and “cats,” the other. In the center lay a bowl filled with tiny baskets, carved from peach-stones. From the molding hung a fringe of hockey-sticks.
Having arranged all Arthur’s things, the quartette filed upstairs to the closet where Dicky’s paper-work was kept.
“Gracious, I didn’t realize there were so many,” Rosie said.
“Sure, the lad has worked day and night,” Granny said, patting Dicky’s thin cheek.
They filled Arthur’s baskets and trooped back to the shop. They lined show case and shelves with the glittering things—boxes, big and little, gorgeously ornamented with stars and moons, caps of gold and silver, flying gay plumes, rainbow boats too beautiful to sail on anything but fairy seas, miniature jackets and trousers that only a circus rider would wear.
“Dicky, I never did see anything look so lovely,” Maida said, shaking her hands with delight. “I really didn’t realize how pretty they were.”
Dicky’s big eyes glowed with satisfaction. “Nor me neither,” he confessed.
“And now,” Maida said, bubbling over with suppressed importance, “Rosie’s candies—I’ve saved that until the last.” She pulled out one of the drawers under the show case and lifted it on to the counter. It was filled with candy-boxes of paper, prettily decorated with flower patterns on the outside, with fringes of lace paper on the inside. “I ordered these boxes for you, Rosie,” she explained. “I knew your candy would sell better if it was put up nicely. I thought the little ones could be five-cent size, the middle-sized ones ten-cent size, and the big ones twenty-five cent size.”
Rosie was dancing up and down with delight. “They’re just lovely, Maida, and how sweet you were to think of it. But it was just like you.”
“Now we must pack them,” Maida said.
Four pairs of hands made light work of this. By nine o’clock all the boxes were filled and spread out temptingly in the show case. By a quarter past nine, three of the W.M.N.T.’s were in bed trying hard to get to sleep. But Maida stayed up. The boxes were not her only surprise.
After the others had gone, she and Granny worked for half an hour in the little shop.
The Saturday before Christmas dawned clear and fair. Rosie hallooed for Dicky and Arthur as she came out of doors at half-past seven and all three arrived at the shop together. Their faces took on such a comic look of surprise that Maida burst out laughing.
“But where did it all come from?” Rosie asked in bewilderment. “Maida, you slyboots, you must have done all this after we left.”
Maida nodded.
But all Arthur and Dicky said was “Gee!” and “Jiminy crickets!” But Maida found these exclamatives quite as expressive as Rosie’s hugs. And, indeed, she herself thought the place worthy of any degree of admiring enthusiasm.
The shop was so strung with garlands of Christmas green that it looked like a bower. Bunches of mistletoe and holly added their colors to the holiday cheer. Red Christmas bells hung everywhere.
“My goodness, I never passed such a day in my life,” Maida said that night at dinner. She was telling it all to Granny, whohad been away on mysterious business of her own. “It’s been like a beehive here ever since eight o’clock this morning. If we’d each of us had an extra pair of hands at our knees and another at our waists, perhaps we could have begun to wait on all the people.”
“Sure ’twas no more than you deserved for being such busy little bees,” Granny approved.
“The only trouble was,” Maida went on smilingly, “that they liked everything so much that they could not decide which they wanted most. Of course, the boys preferred Arthur’s carvings and the girls Rosie’s candy. But it was hard to say who liked Dicky’s things the best.”
Granny twinkled with delight. She had never told Maida, but she did not need to tell her, that Dicky was her favorite.
“And then the grown people who came, Granny! First Arthur’s father on his way to work, then Mrs. Lathrop and Laura—they bought loads of things, and Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Doyle and even Mr. Flanagan bought a hockey-stick. He said,” Maida dimpled with delight, “he said he bought itto use on Arthur and Rosie if they ever hooked jack again. Poor Miss Allison bought one of Arthur’s ‘cats’—what do you suppose for?”
Granny had no idea.
“To wind her wool on. Then Billy came at the last minute and bought everything that was left. And just think, Granny, there was a crowd of little boys and girls who had stood about watching all day without any money to spend and Billy divided among them all the things he bought. Guess how much money they made!”
Granny guessed three sums, and each time Maida said, triumphantly, “More!” At last Granny had to give it up.
“Arthur made five dollars and thirty cents. Dicky made three dollars and eighty-seven cents. Rosie made two dollars and seventy cents.”
After dinner that night, Maida accompanied Rosie and Dicky on the Christmas-shopping expedition.
They went first to a big dry goods store with Dicky. They helped Dicky to pick out a fur collar for his mother from a counter marked conspicuously $2.98. The one theyselected was of gray and brown fur. It was Maida’s opinion that it was sable and chinchilla mixed.
Dicky’s face shone with delight when at last he tucked the big round box safely under his arm. “Just think, I’ve been planning to do this for three years,” he said, “and I never could have done it now if it hadn’t been for you, Maida.”
Next Dicky took the two little girls where they could buy razors. “The kind that goes like a lawn-mower,” Rosie explained to the proprietor. The man stared hard before he showed them his stock. But he was very kind and explained to them exactly how the wonderful little machine worked.
Maida noticed that Rosie examined very carefully all the things displayed in windows and on counters. But nothing she saw seemed to satisfy her, for she did not buy.
“What is it, Rosie?” Maida asked after a while.
“I’m looking for something for my mother.”
“I’ll help you,” Maida said. She took Rosie’s hand, and, thus linked together, thetwo little girls discussed everything that they saw.
Suddenly, Rosie uttered a little cry of joy and stopped at a jeweler’s window. A tray with the label, “SOLID SILVER, $1,” overflowed with little heart-shaped pendants.
“Mama’d love one of those,” Rosie said. “She just loved things she could hang round her neck.”
They went inside. “It’s just what I want,” Rosie declared. “But I wish I had a little silver chain for it. I can’t afford one though,” she concluded wistfully.
“Oh, I know what to do,” Maida said. “Buy a piece of narrow black velvet ribbon. Once my father gave my mother a beautiful diamond heart. Mother used to wear it on a black velvet ribbon. Afterwards papa bought her a chain of diamonds. But she always liked the black velvet best and so did papa and so did I. Papa said it made her neck look whiter.”
The other three children looked curiously at Maida when she said, “diamond heart.” When she said, “string of diamonds,” they looked at each other.
“Was that another of your dreams, Maida?” Rosie asked mischievously.
“Dreams!” Maida repeated, firing up. But before she could say anything that she would regret, the dimples came. “Perhaps it was a dream,” she said prettily. “But if it was, then everything’s a dream.”
“I believe every word that Maida says,” Dicky protested stoutly.
“I believe that Maida believes it,” Arthur said with a smile.
They all stopped with Rosie while she bought the black velvet ribbon and strung the heart on it. She packed it neatly away in the glossy box in which the jeweler had done it up.
“If my mama doesn’t come back to wear that heart, nobody else ever will,” she said passionately. “Never—never—never—unless I have a little girl of my own some day.”
“Your mother’ll come back,” Maida said.