Maidas Little Shop

Maida's Little Shop

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Maida's Little Shop, by Inez Haynes
Irwin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: Maida's Little Shop
Author: Inez Haynes Irwin
Release Date: January 16, 2006 [EBook #17530]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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LITTLE SHOP ***

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Maida's Little Shop By Inez Haynes Irwin
Author of MAIDA'S LITTLE HOUSE, MAIDA'S LITTLE SCHOOL,
ETC.
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers New York

Copyright, 1909, by B. W. HUEBSCH

TO LITTLE P. D. FROM BIG P. D.

CONTENTS
Chapter I
: The Ride
Chapter II
: Cleaning Up
Chapter III
: The First Day
Chapter IV
: The Second Day
Chapter V
: Primrose Court
Chapter VI
: Two Calls
Chapter VII
: Trouble

Chapter VIII
: A Rainy Day
Chapter IX
: Work
Chapter X
: Play
Chapter XI
: Halloween
Chapter XII
: The First Snow
Chapter XIII
: The Fair
Chapter XIV
: Christmas Happenings

MAIDA'S LITTLE SHOP
CHAPTER I
: THE RIDE
Four people sat in the big, shining automobile. Three of them were men.
The fourth was a little girl. The little girl's name was Maida

Westabrook. The three men were "Buffalo" Westabrook, her father, Dr.
Pierce, her physician, and Billy Potter, her friend. They were coming
from Marblehead to Boston.
Maida sat in one corner of the back seat gazing dreamily out at the
whirling country. She found it very beautiful and very curious. They
were going so fast that all the reds and greens and yellows of the
autumn trees melted into one variegated band. A moment later they
came out on the ocean. And now on the water side were two other
streaks of color, one a spongy blue that was sky, another a clear shining
blue that was sea. Maida half-shut her eyes and the whole world
seemed to flash by in ribbons.
"May I get out for a moment, papa?" she asked suddenly in a thin little
voice. "I'd like to watch the waves."
"All right," her father answered briskly. To the chauffeur he said, "Stop
here, Henri." To Maida, "Stay as long as you want, Posie."
"Posie" was Mr. Westabrook's pet-name for Maida.
Billy Potter jumped out and helped Maida to the ground. The three men
watched her limp to the sea-wall.
She was a child whom you would have noticed anywhere because of
her luminous, strangely-quiet, gray eyes and because of the ethereal
look given to her face by a floating mass of hair, pale-gold and tendrilly.
And yet I think you would have known that she was a sick little girl at
the first glance. When she moved, it was with a great slowness as if
everything tired her. She was so thin that her hands were like claws and
her cheeks scooped in instead of out. She was pale, too, and somehow
her eyes looked too big. Perhaps this was because her little
heart-shaped face seemed too small.
"You've got to find something that will take up her mind, Jerome," Dr.
Pierce said, lowering his voice, "and you've got to be quick about it.
Just what Greinschmidt feared has come--that languor--that lack of
interest in everything. You've got to find something for her to do."

Dr. Pierce spoke seriously. He was a round, short man, just exactly as
long any one way as any other. He had springy gray curls all over his
head and a nose like a button. Maida thought that he looked like a very
old but a very jolly and lovable baby. When he laughed--and he was
always laughing with Maida--he shook all over like jelly that has been
turned out of a jar. His very curls bobbed. But it seemed to Maida that
no matter how hard he chuckled, his eyes were always serious when
they rested on her.
Maida was very fond of Dr. Pierce. She had known him all her life. He
had gone to college with her father. He had taken care of her health
ever since Dr. Greinschmidt left. Dr. Greinschmidt was the great
physician who had come all the way across the ocean from Germany to
make Maida well. Before the operation Maida could not walk. Now she
could walk easily. Ever since she could remember she had always
added to her prayers at night a special request that she might some day
be like other little girls. Now she was like other little girls, except that
she limped. And yet now