Early one morning, a week later, a party of three—Granny Flynn, Billy and Maida—walked up Beacon Street and across the common to the subway. Maida had never walked so far in her life. But her father had told her that if she wanted to keep the shop, she must give up her carriage and her automobile. That was not hard. She was willing to give up anything that she owned for the little shop.
They left the car at City Square in Charlestown and walked the rest of the way. It was Saturday, a brilliant morning in a beautiful autumn. All the children in the neighborhood were out playing. Maida looked at each one of them as she passed. They seemed as wonderful as fairy beings to her—for would they not all be her customers soon? And yet, such was her excitement, she could not remember one face after she had passed it. A single picture remained in her mind—a picture of a little girl standing alone in the middle of the court. Black-haired, black-eyed, a vivid spot of color in a scarlet cape and a scarlet hat, the child was scattering bread-crumbs to a flock of pigeons. The pigeons did not seem afraid of her. They flew close to her feet. One even alighted on her shoulder.
“It makes me think of St. Mark’s in Venice,” Maida said to Billy.
But, little girl—scarlet cape—flocks of doves—St. Mark’s, all went out of her head entirely when she unlocked the door of the little shop.
“Oh, oh, oh!” she cried, “how nice and clean it looks!”
The shop seemed even larger than she remembered it. The confused, dusty, cluttery look had gone. But with its dull paint and its blackened ceiling, it still seemed dark and dingy.
Maida ran behind the counter, peeped into the show cases, poked her head into the window, drew out the drawers that lined the wall, pulled covers from the boxes on the shelves. There is no knowing where her investigations would have ended if Billy had not said:
“See here, Miss Curiosity, we can’t put in the whole morning on the shop. This is a preliminary tour of investigation. Come and see the rest of it. This way to the living-room!”
The living-room led from the shop—a big square room, empty now, of course. Maida limped over to the window. “Oh, oh, oh!” she cried; “did you ever see such a darling little yard?”
“It surely is little,” Billy agreed, “not much bigger than a pocket handkerchief, is it?”