Next I think you would have noticed an old woman who kept coming to the living-room door—an old woman in a black gown and a white apron so stiffly starched that it rattled when it touched anything—an old woman with twinkling blue eyes and hair, enclosing, as in a silver frame, a little carved nut of a face—an old woman who kept soothing the little girl with a cheery:
“Now joost you be patient, my lamb, sure somebody’ll be here soon.”
The shop was unchanged since yesterday, except for a big bowl of asters, red, white and blue.
“Three cheers for the red, white and blue,” Maida sang when she arranged them. She had been singing at intervals ever since. Suddenly the latch slipped. The bell rang.
Maida jumped. Then she sat so still in her high chair that you would have thought she had turned to stone. But her eyes, glued to the moving door, had a look as if she did not know what to expect.
The door swung wide. A young man entered. It was Billy Potter.
He walked over to the show case, his hat in his hand. And all the time he looked Maida straight in the eye. But you would have thought he had never seen her before.
“Please, mum,” he asked humbly, “do you sell fairy-tales here?”
Maida saw at once that it was one of Billy’s games. She had to bite her lips to keep from laughing. “Yes,” she said, when she had made her mouth quite firm. “How much do you want to pay for them?”
“Not more than a penny each, mum,” he replied.