MAIDA’S LITTLE SHOP
In Primrose Court, the smaller children were playing as briskly as though there were no such thing as weather. Brown-eyed, brown-haired, motherly Molly Doyle, quick, efficient but quiet, was apparently acting as the wife and mother of an imaginary house. Smaller and younger, Timmie Doyle, her brother, a little pop-eyed, brownie-like boy, slow-moving and awkward, was husband and father. There were four children in this make-believe household. Quite frequently, little Betsy Hale, slim, black-eyed and rosy-cheeked and little Delia Dore, chubby and blonde with thick red curls, attempted to run away; were caught and punished with great thoroughness. Apparently Dorothy and Mabel Clark, twin sisters, one the exact duplicate of the other, with big, round blue eyes and long round golden curls, were the grown-up daughters of this make-believe family. They were intent on household tasks, thrusting into an imaginary stove absolutely real mud pies and sweeping an imaginary room with an absolutely real dust-pan and brush.
Aside from this active scene, everything was quiet. Farther down the Court, doves had settled; were pink-toeing about feeding busily; preening and cooing.
“Sometimes,” Laura said thoughtfully, “I feel as though I had dreamed Maida. If the Little Shop were not here with her name over the door and all of you to talk about her with me, I should believe I had just waked up.” She stopped a moment. “If it had been a dream how mad I should be to think I had waked up.”
“Do you remember how exciting it was when Maida first came to live over the Little Shop?” Rosie exclaimed.
“I should say I did!” It was Laura who answered her. “Wasn’t it wonderful when all that pretty furniture came for their rooms?”
“Yes, and the canaries and the great geraniums for the windows,” Rosie added eagerly.
“The most wonderful thing though,” Arthur went on, “was when the sign went up. It was such a pretty sign—MAIDA’S LITTLE SHOP in gold painted on blue. And—”
“Gee, how wild we all were to see Maida!” Harold said.
“I don’t know what I expected,” Rosie’s voice was dreamy, “but I certainly was surprised when Maida appeared—”