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 almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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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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 that she could do all the things that other little girls did, she no longer cared to do them--not even hopping and skipping, which she had always expected would be the greatest fun in the world. Maida herself thought this very strange.
"But what can I find for her to do?" "Buffalo" Westabrook said.
You could tell from the