“You all go if you want,” Maida answered, “I don’t think I want to swim. Somehow I feel as though I’d like to stay about the house. So many things have happened that I’m worried about going away.”
“So do I, Maida,” Laura agreed emphatically.
So although the boys went in swimming as usual, the girls stayed at home.
“I feel tired, too,” Maida remarked. They took books from the library and settled quietly in the Tree Room where they read and talked all the afternoon. They were interrupted twice—once by the boys who, as though they had a responsibility too, cut their swimming short—and by the baby.
When the baby awoke, late in the afternoon, Rosie brought her downstairs into the air for a while. They all declared that she looked quite a different child. A tinge of pink had come into her soft brown cheeks and the warmth and moisture of her nap had curled the brown hair in her neck.
“Oh you sweet sweet darling!” Maida kissed the little girl ecstatically. “Oh how I wish your parents would give you to me! That’s all we need in the Little House—a baby. Delia’s not quite little enough.” She caught Delia and kissed her.
“Delia bid dirl,” Delia protested.
Even the boys were amused and entertained by their little visitor. Arthur deigned to make faces for her. They amused her enormously, and when Harold unloosed an ear-splitting whistle, she turned round, delighted eyes in his direction. But that she was still tired was evident; she kept falling into little naps.
“I don’t think I’ll bathe her again so soon,” Rosie meditated with knitted brows when they had taken her upstairs for the night. “To-morrow I’ll give her a bath in the morning and another at night. But now I’ll just wash her face and hands and let her have her bottle. You do it this time, Maida and to-morrow,” added Rosie, generous always, “we’ll take turns bathing and feeding her.”
As they came downstairs Laura said, “I wonder what time it is. Oh half past five!”