Illustrations in Black and White
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| Aunt Mary Wore Fluffy Dresses | [5] |
| Growly Voice Eats Snowballs | [11] |
| Aunt Mary Gets a Sealskin Coat | [12] |
| Maida Crept out of Bed | [16] |
| The Letter | [20] |
| The Birds Came to the Rescue | [28] |
| The Wolf Swallows a Tablet of Climate | [36] |
| Maida Meets Santa Claus | [44] |
| Out Popped Jack-in-the-Box | [49] |
| A Duel with Icicles | [71] |
| The Walrus Mends the Street | [76] |
| “How Do You Do?” in Eskimo | [101] |
| The Explorer Turns on the Tropical Climate | [115] |
| Maida was Carted away in a Box | [139] |
| Fido Flew | [142] |
| The Queen Sees Her Face | [145] |
| The Gates of the Prison Flew Open | [161] |
| Maida | [194] |
THE TOP O’ THE WORLD
Chapter I
The Wishing Post grows right out of the ground at the Top of the World. Some very wise men with bald heads and long white beards say it isn’t a Wishing Post at all, and call it the North Pole, but Maida knows more about it than they do for she has been there and they haven’t. She really and truly went there in a flying ship, and I can’t begin to tell you all that she saw and all that she did, but I will try and remember as much as I can.
If you doubt my story ask Maida herself. She is a dear little girl, just nine, with curly brown hair and deep blue eyes, and she lives in a big house with papa and mama and Aunt Mary. If you want to find her go to Central Park and turn to the left. Maida’s house is the third from the corner. I don’t just remember the number, and I’ve forgotten the street, but as she nearly always wears a red dress and you know how she looks, you can easily find her.
All the trouble began because Maida was such a little girl. She was just big enough to know how little she was, and she didn’t like being a little girl at all. She wanted to be grown up. She told me so herself. She had reasons, too, oh so many. To begin with, there was ICE-CREAM. Maida loved ICE-CREAM. She could never get enough. (Perhaps you can never get enough, so you know just how she felt.) And she could eat and eat and eat, and ICE-CREAM never hurt her. On this point she differed with papa and mama.