Laura often pretended not to see them. She would lift her large family of dolls, one after another, from cradle to bed and from bed to tiny chair and sofa. She would parade up and down the walk, using first one doll-carriage, then the other. She would even play a game of croquet against herself. Occasionally she would call in a condescending tone, “You may come in for awhile if you wish, little children.” And when the delighted little throng had scampered to her side, she would show them all her toy treasures on condition that they did not touch them.
When the proceedings reached this stage, Maida would be so angry that she could look no longer. Very often, after Laura had sent the children away, Maida would call them into the shop. She would let them play all the rest of the afternoon with anything her stock afforded.
On the right side of the court lived Arthur Duncan, the Misses Allison and Rosie Brine. The more Maida saw of Arthur, the more she disliked him. In fact, she hated to have him come into the shop. It seemed to her that he went out of his way to be impolite to her, that he looked at her with a decided expression of contempt in his big dark eyes. But Rosie and Dicky seemed very fond of him. Billy Potter had once told her that one good way of judging people was by the friends they made. If that were true, she had to acknowledge that there must be something fine about Arthur that she had not discovered.
Maida guessed that the W.M.N.T.’s met three or four times a week. Certainly there were very busy doings at Dicky’s or at Arthur’s house every other day. What it was all about, Maida did not know. But she fancied that it had much to do with Dicky’s frequent purchases of colored tissue paper.
The Misses Allison had become great friends with Granny. Matilda, the blind sister, was very slender and sweet-faced. She sat all day in the window, crocheting the beautiful, fleecy shawls by which she helped support the household.
Jemima, the older, short, fat and with snapping black eyes, did the housework, attended to the parrot and waited by inches on her afflicted sister. Occasionally in the evening they would come to call on Granny. Billy Potter was very nice to them both. He was always telling the sisters the long amusing stories of his adventures. Miss Matilda’s gentle face used positively to beam at these times, and Miss Jemima laughed so hard that, according to her own story, his talk put her “in stitches.”
Maida did not see Rosie’s mother often. To tell the truth, she was a little afraid of her. She was a tall, handsome, black-browed woman—a grown-up Rosie—with an appearance of great strength and of even greater temper. “Ah, that choild’s the limb,” Granny would say, when Maida brought her some new tale of Rosie’s disobedience. And yet, in the curious way in which Maida divined things that were not told her, she knew that, next to Dicky, Rosie was Granny’s favorite of all the children in the neighborhood.
With all these little people to act upon its stage, it is not surprising that Primrose Court seemed to Maida to be a little theater of fun—a stage to which her window was the royal box. Something was going on there from morning to night. Here would be a little group of little girls playing “house” with numerous families of dolls. There, it would be boys, gathered in an excited ring, playing marbles or top. Just before school, games like leap-frog, or tag or prisoners’ base would prevail. But, later, when there was more time, hoist-the-sail would fill the air with its strange cries, or hide-and-seek would make the place boil with excitement. Maida used to watch these games wistfully, for Granny had decided that they were all too rough for her. She would not even let Maida play “London-Bridge-is-falling-down” or “drop the handkerchief”—anything, in fact, in which she would have to run or pull.
But Granny had no objections to the gentler fun of “Miss Jennie-I-Jones,” “ring-a-ring-a-rounder,” “water, water wildflower,” “the farmer in the dell,” “go in and out the windows.” Maida used to try to pick out the airs of these games on the spinet—she never could decide which was the sweetest.
Maida soon learned how to play jackstones and, at the end of the second week, she was almost as proficient as Rosie with the top. The thing she most wanted to learn, however, was jump-rope. Every little girl in Primrose Court could jump-rope—even the twins, who were especially nimble at “pepper.” Maida tried it one night—all alone in the shop. But suddenly her weak leg gave way under her and she fell to the floor. Granny, rushing in from the other room, scolded her violently. She ended by forbidding her to jump again without special permission. But Maida made up her mind that she was going to learn sometime, even, as she said with a roguish smile, “if it took a leg.” She talked it over with Rosie.