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, who had 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.”