CHAPTER V: PRIMROSE COURT
But during that first two weeks a continual rush of business madelong days for Maida. All the children in the neighborhood werecurious to see the place. It had been dark and dingy as long as theycould remember. Now it was always bright and pretty--always sweetwith the perfume of flowers, always gay with the music of birds. Butmore, the children wanted to see the lame little girl who "tendedstore," who seemed to try so hard to please her customers and whowas so affectionate and respectful with the old, old lady whom shecalled "Granny."
At noon and night the bell sounded a continuous tinkle.
For a week Maida kept rather close to the shop. She wanted to getacquainted with all her customers. Moreover, she wanted to find outwhich of the things she had bought sold quickly and which wereunpopular.
After a day or two her life fell into a regular programme.
Early in the morning she would put the shop to rights for the day'ssale, dusting, replacing the things she had sold, rearranging themoften according to some pretty new scheme.
About eight o'clock the bell would call her into the shop and itwould be brisk work until nine. Then would come a rest of threehours, broken only by an occasional customer. In this interval sheoften worked in the yard, raking up the leaves that fell from vineand bush, picking the bravely-blooming dahlias, gathering sprays ofwoodbine for the vases, scattering crumbs to the birds.
At twelve the children would begin to flood the shop again and Maidawould be on her feet constantly until two. Between two and four cameanother long rest. After school trade started up again. Often itlasted until six, when she locked the door for the night.
In her leisure moments she used to watch the people coming and goingin Primrose Court. With Rosie's and Dicky's help, she soon kneweverybody by name. She discovered by degrees that on the right sideof the court lived the Hales, the Clarks, the Doyles and the Dores;on the left side, the Duncans, the Brines and the Allisons. In thebig house at the back lived the Lathrops.
Betsy was a great delight to Maida, for the neighborhood brimmedwith stories of her mischief. She had buried her best doll in theash-barrel, thrown her mother's pocketbook down the cesspool, putall the clean laundry into a tub of water and painted the parlorfireplace with tomato catsup. In a single afternoon, having becomesecretly possessed of a pair of scissors, she cut all the fringe offthe parlor furniture, cut great scallops in the parlor curtains, cutgreat patches of fur off the cat's back. When her mother found her,she was busy cutting her own hair.
Often Granny would hear the door slam on Maida's hurried rush fromthe shop. Hobbling to the window, she would see the child leadingBetsy by the hand. "Running away again," was all Maida would say.Occasionally Maida would call in a vexed tone, "Now _how_ did shecreep past the window without my seeing her?" And outside would berosy-cheeked, brass-buttoned Mr. Flanagan, carrying Betsy home. OnceBilly arrived at the shop, bearing Betsy in his arms. "She wasalmost to the bridge," he said, "when I caught sight of her from thecar window. The little tramp!"
Betsy never seemed to mind being caught. For an instant the littlerosebud that was her mouth would part over the tiny pearls that wereher teeth. This roguish smile seemed to say: "You wait until thenext time. You won't catch me then."
Sometimes Betsy would come into the shop for an hour's play. Maidaloved to have her there but it was like entertaining a whirlwind.Betsy had a strong curiosity to see what the drawers and boxescontained. Everything had to be put back in its place when she left.
Next to the Hales lived the Clarks. By the end of the first weekMaida was the chief adoration of the Clark twins. Dorothy and Mabelwere just as good as Betsy was naughty. When they came over to seeMaida, they played quietly with whatever she chose to give them. Itwas an hour, ordinarily, before they could be made to talk above awhisper. If they saw Maida coming into the court, they would run toher side, slipping a hot little hand into each of hers. Attendedalways by this roly-poly bodyguard, Maida would limp from group togroup of the playing children. Nobody in Primrose Court could tellthe Clark twins apart. Maida soon learned the difference althoughshe could never explain it to anybody else. "It's something you haveto feel," she said.
Billy Potter enjoyed the twins as much as Maida did. "Good morning,Dorothy-Mabel," he always said when he met one of them; "is this youor your sister?" And he always answered their whispered remarks withwhispers so much softer than theirs that he finally succeeded inforcing them to raise their shy little voices.
The Doyles and the Dores lived in one house next to the Clarks,Molly and Tim on the first floor, Dicky and Delia above. Maidabecame very fond of the Doyle children. Like Betsy, they were tooyoung to go to school and she saw a good deal of them in the lonelyschool hours. The puddle was an endless source of amusement to them.As long as it remained, they entertained themselves playing alongits shores.
"There's that choild in the water again," Granny would cry from theliving-room.
Looking out, Maida would see Tim spread out on all fours. Like anobstinate little pig, he would lie still until Molly picked him up.She would take him home and in a few moments he would reappear infresh, clean clothes again.
"Hello, Tim," Billy Potter would say whenever they met. "Fallen intoa pud-muddle lately?"
The word _pud-muddle_ always sent Tim off into peals of laughter. Itwas the only thing Maida had discovered that could make him laugh,for he was as serious as Molly was merry. Molly certainly was thejolliest little girl in the court--Maida had never seen her withanything but a smiling face.
Dicky's mother went to work so early and came back so late thatMaida had never seen her. But Dicky soon became an intimate. Maidahad begun the reading lessons and Dicky was so eager to get on thatthey were progressing famously.
The Lathrops lived in the big house at the back of the court. Grannylearned from the Misses Allison that, formerly, the wholeneighborhood had belonged to the Lathrop family. But they had soldall their land, piece by piece, except the one big lot on which thehouse stood. Perhaps it was because they had once been so importantthat Mrs. Lathrop seemed to feel herself a little better than therest of the people in Primrose Court. At any rate, although shespoke with all, the Misses Allison were the only ones on whom shecondescended to call. Maida caught a glimpse of her occasionally onthe piazza--a tall, thin woman, white-haired and sharp-featured, whoalways wore a worsted shawl.
The house was a big, bulky building, a mass of piazzas andbay-windows, with a hexagonal cupola on the top. It was painted whitewith green blinds and trimmed with a great deal of wooden lace. Thewide lawn was well-kept and plots of flowers, here and there, gaveit a gay air.
Laura had a brother named Harold, who was short and fat. Haroldseemed to do nothing all day long but ride a wheel at a tearing paceover the asphalt paths, and regularly, for two hours every morning,to draw a shrieking bow across a tortured violin.
The more Maida watched Laura the less she liked her. She could seethat what Rosie said was perfectly true--Laura put on airs. Everyafternoon Laura played on the lawn. Her appearance was the signalfor all the small fry of the neighborhood to gather about the gate.First would come the Doyles, then Betsy, then, one by one, thestrange children who wandered into the court, until there would be arow of wistful little faces stuck between the bars of the fence.They would follow every move that Laura made as she played with thetoys spread in profusion upon the grass.
Laura often pretended not to see them. She would lift her largefamily of dolls, one after another, from cradle to bed and from bedto tiny chair and sofa. She would parade up and down the walk, usingfirst one doll-carriage, then the other. She would even play a gameof croquet against herself. Occasionally she would call in acondescending tone, "You may come in for awhile if you wish, littlechildren." And when the delighted little throng had scampered to herside, she would show them all her toy treasures on condition thatthey did not touch them.
When the proceedings reached this stage, Maida would be so angrythat she coul
d look no longer. Very often, after Laura had sent thechildren away, Maida would call them into the shop. She would letthem play all the rest of the afternoon with anything her stockafforded.
On the right side of the court lived Arthur Duncan, the MissesAllison and Rosie Brine. The more Maida saw of Arthur, the more shedisliked him. In fact, she hated to have him come into the shop. Itseemed 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 hisbig dark eyes. But Rosie and Dicky seemed very fond of him. BillyPotter had once told her that one good way of judging people was bythe friends they made. If that were true, she had to acknowledgethat there must be something fine about Arthur that she had notdiscovered.
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'shouse every other day. What it was all about, Maida did not know.But she fancied that it had much to do with Dicky's frequentpurchases 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 dayin the window, crocheting the beautiful, fleecy shawls by which shehelped support the household.
Jemima, the older, short, fat and with snapping black eyes, did thehousework, attended to the parrot and waited by inches on herafflicted sister. Occasionally in the evening they would come tocall on Granny. Billy Potter was very nice to them both. He wasalways telling the sisters the long amusing stories of hisadventures. Miss Matilda's gentle face used positively to beam atthese times, and Miss Jemima laughed so hard that, according to herown story, his talk put her "in stitches."
Maida did not see Rosie's mother often. To tell the truth, she was alittle afraid of her. She was a tall, handsome, black-browed woman--agrown-up Rosie--with an appearance of great strength and of evengreater temper. "Ah, that choild's the limb," Granny would say, whenMaida brought her some new tale of Rosie's disobedience. And yet, inthe curious way in which Maida divined things that were not toldher, she knew that, next to Dicky, Rosie was Granny's favorite ofall the children in the neighborhood.
With all these little people to act upon its stage, it is notsurprising that Primrose Court seemed to Maida to be a littletheater of fun--a stage to which her window was the royal box.Something was going on there from morning to night. Here would be alittle group of little girls playing "house" with numerous familiesof dolls. There, it would be boys, gathered in an excited ring,playing marbles or top. Just before school, games like leap-frog, ortag or prisoners' base would prevail. But, later, when there wasmore time, hoist-the-sail would fill the air with its strange cries,or hide-and-seek would make the place boil with excitement. Maidaused to watch these games wistfully, for Granny had decided thatthey 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 "MissJennie-I-Jones," "ring-a-ring-a-rounder," "water, water wildflower,""the farmer in the dell," "go in and out the windows." Maida used totry to pick out the airs of these games on the spinet--she never coulddecide which was the sweetest.
Maida soon learned how to play jackstones and, at the end of thesecond week, she was almost as proficient as Rosie with the top. Thething she most wanted to learn, however, was jump-rope. Every littlegirl in Primrose Court could jump-rope--even the twins, who wereespecially nimble at "pepper." Maida tried it one night--all alone inthe shop. But suddenly her weak leg gave way under her and she fellto the floor. Granny, rushing in from the other room, scolded herviolently. She ended by forbidding her to jump again without specialpermission. But Maida made up her mind that she was going to learnsometime, even, as she said with a roguish smile, "if it took aleg." She talked it over with Rosie.
"You let her jump just one jump every morning and night, Granny,"Rosie advised, "and I'm sure it will be all right. That won't hurther any and, after awhile, she'll find she can jump two, then threeand so on. That's the way I learned."
Granny agreed to this. Maida practiced constantly, one jump in hernightgown, just before going to bed, and another, all dressed, justafter she got up.
"I jumped three jumps this morning without failing, Granny," shesaid one morning at breakfast. Within a few days the record climbedto five, then to seven, then, at a leap, to ten.
Dr. Pierce called early one morning. His eyes opened wide when theyfell upon her. "Well, well, Pinkwink," he said. "What do you mean bybringing me way over here! I thought you were supposed to be a sickyoung person. Where'd you get that color?"
A flush like that of a pink sweet-pea blossom had begun to show inMaida's cheek. It was faint but it was permanent.
"Why, you're the worst fraud on my list. If you keep on like this,young woman, I shan't have any excuse for calling. You've done fine,Granny."
Granny looked, as Dr. Pierce afterwards said, "as tickled as Punch."
"How do you like shop-keeping?" Dr. Pierce went on.
"Like it!" Maida plunged into praise so swift and enthusiastic thatDr. Pierce told her to go more slowly or he would put a bit in hermouth. But he listened attentively. "Well, I see you're not tired ofit," he commented.
"Tired!" Maida's indignation was so intense that Dr. Pierce shookuntil every curl bobbed.
"And I get so hungry," she went on. "You see I have to wait untiltwo o'clock sometimes before I can get my lunch, because from twelveto two are my busy hours. Those days it seems as if the school bellwould never ring."
"Sure, tis a foine little pig OI'm growing now," Granny said.
"And as for sleeping--" Maida stopped as if there were no wordsanywhere to describe her condition.
Granny finished it for her. "The choild sleeps like a top."
Billy Potter came at least every day and sometimes oftener. Everychild in Primrose Court knew him by the end of the first week andevery child loved him by the end of the second. And they all calledhim Billy. He would not let them call him Mr. Potter or even UncleBilly because, he said, he was a child when he was with them and hewanted to be treated like a child. He played all their games with askill that they thought no mere grown-up could possess. Like Rosie,he seemed to be bubbling over with life and spirits. He was alwaysrunning, leaping, jumping, climbing, turning cartwheels andsomersaults, vaulting fences and "chinning" himself unexpectedlywhenever he came to a doorway.
"Oh, Masther Billy, 'tis the choild that you are!" Granny would say,twinkling.
"Yes, ma'am," Billy would answer.
At the end of the first fortnight, the neighborhood had acceptedGranny and Maida as the mother-in-law and daughter of a "travelingman." From the beginning Granny had seemed one of them, but Maidawas a puzzle. The children could not understand how a little girlcould be grown-up and babyish at the same time. And if you stop tothink it over, perhaps you can understand how they felt.
Here was a child who had never played,"London-Bridge-is-falling-down" or jackstones or jump-rope orhop-scotch. Yet she talked familiarly of automobiles, yachts and horses.She knew nothing about geography and yet, her conversation was full ofsuch phrases as "The spring we were in Paris" or "The winter we spentin Rome." She knew nothing about nouns and verbs but she talked Italianfluently with the hand-organ man who came every week and many of her bookswere in French. She knew nothing about fractions or decimals, yet shereferred familiarly to "drawing checks," to gold eagles and to WallStreet. Her writing was so bad that the children made fun of it, yetshe could spin off a letter of eight pages in a flash. And she toldthe most wonderful fairy-tales that had ever been heard in PrimroseCourt.
Because of all these things the children had a kind of contempt forher mingled with a curious awe.
She was so polite with grown people that it was fairly embarrassing.She always arose from her chair when they entered the room, alwayspicked up the things they dropped and never interrupted. And yet shecould carry on a long conversation with th
em. She never said, "Yes,ma'am," or "No, ma'am." Instead, she said, "Yes, Mrs. Brine," or"No, Miss Allison," and she looked whomever she was talking withstraight in the eye.
She would play with the little children as willingly as with thebigger ones. Often when the older girls and boys were in school, shewould bring out a lapful of toys and spend the whole morning withthe little ones. When Granny called her, she would give all the toysaway, dividing them with a careful justice. And, yet, wheneverchildren bought things of her in the shop, she always expected themto pay the whole price. You can see how the neighborhood wouldfairly buzz with talk about her.
As for Maida--with all this newness of friend-making and out-of-doorsgames, it is not to be wondered that her head was a jumble at theend of each day. In that delicious, dozy interval before she fellasleep at night, all kinds of pretty pictures seemed to paintthemselves on her eyelids.
Now it was Rose-Red swaying like a great overgrown scarlet flowerfrom the bars of a lamp-post. Now it was Dicky hoisting himselfalong on his crutches, his face alight with his radiant smile. Nowit was a line of laughing, rosy-cheeked children, as long as thetail of a kite, pelting to goal at the magic cry "Liberty poles arebending!" Or it was a group of little girls, setting out rows androws of bright-colored paper-dolls among the shadows of one of thedeep old doorways. But always in a few moments came the sweetestkind of sleep. And always through her dreams flowed the plaintivemusic of "Go in and out the windows." Often she seemed to wake inthe morning to the Clarion cry, "Hoist the sail!"
It did not seem to Maida that the days were long enough to do allthe things she wanted to do.