Maidas Little Shop | Page 4

opposite the court. What a perfectly darling little place!"
"Good Lord! that's Connors'," Dr. Pierce explained. "Many a reckless penny I've squandered there, my dear. Connors was the funniest, old, bent, dried-up man. I wonder who keeps it now."
As if in answer to his question, a wrinkled old lady came to the window to take a paper-doll from the dusty display there.
"What are those yellow things in that glass jar?" Maida asked.
"Pickled limes," Dr. Pierce responded promptly. "How I used to love them!"
"Oh, father, buy me a pickled lime," Maida pleaded. "I never had one in my life and I've been crazy to taste one ever since I read 'Little Women.'"
"All right," Mr. Westabrook said. "Let's come in and treat Maida to a pickled lime."
A bell rang discordantly as they opened the door. Its prolonged clangor finally brought the old lady from the room at the back. She looked in surprise at the three men in their automobile coats and at the little lame girl.
Coming in from the bright sunshine, the shop seemed unpleasantly dark to Maida. After a while she saw that its two windows gave it light enough but that it was very confused, cluttery and dusty.
Mr. Westabrook bought four pickled limes and everybody ate--three of them with enjoyment, Billy with many wry faces and a decided, "Stung!" after the first taste.
"I like pickled limes," Maida said after they had started for Boston. "What a funny little place that was! Oh, how I would like to keep a little shop just like it."
Billy Potter started. For a moment it seemed as if he were about to speak. But instead, he stared hard at Maida, falling gradually into a brown study. From time to time he came out of it long enough to look sharply at her. The sparkle had all gone out of her face. She was pale and dream-absorbed again.
Her father studied her with increasing anxiety as they neared the big house on Beacon Street. Dr. Pierce's face was shadowed too.
"Eureka! I've found it!" Billy exclaimed as they swept past the State House. "I've got it, Mr. Westabrook."
"Got what?"
Billy did not answer at once. The automobile had stopped in front of a big red-brick house. Over the beautifully fluted columns that held up the porch hung a brilliant red vine. Lavender-colored glass, here and there in the windows, made purple patches on the lace of the curtains.
"Got what?" Mr. Westabrook repeated impatiently.
"That little job of the imagination that you put me on a few moments ago," Billy answered mysteriously. "In a moment," he added with a significant look at Maida. "You stay too, Dr. Pierce. I want your approval."
The door of the beautiful old house had opened and a man in livery came out to assist Maida. On the threshold stood an old silver-haired woman in a black-silk gown, a white cap and apron, a little black shawl pinned about her shoulders.
"How's my lamb?" she asked tenderly of Maida.
"Oh, pretty well," Maida said dully. "Oh, Granny," she added with a sudden flare of enthusiasm, "I saw the cunningest little shop. I think I'd rather tend shop than do anything else in the world."
Billy Potter smiled all over his pink face. He followed Mr. Westabrook and Dr. Pierce into the drawing-room.
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Maida went upstairs with Granny Flynn.
Granny Flynn had come straight to the Westabrook house from the boat that brought her from Ireland years ago. She had come to America in search of a runaway daughter but she had never found her. She had helped to nurse Maida's mother in the illness of which she died and she had always taken such care of Maida herself that Maida loved her dearly. Sometimes when they were alone, Maida would call her "Dame," because, she said, "Granny looks just like the 'Dame' who comes into fairy-tales."
Granny Flynn was very little, very bent, very old. "A t'ousand and noine, sure," she always answered when Maida asked her how old. Her skin had cracked into a hundred wrinkles and her long sharp nose and her short sharp chin almost met. But the wrinkles surrounded a pair of eyes that were a twinkling, youthful blue. And her down-turned nose and up-growing chin could not conceal or mar the lovely sweetness of her smile.
Just before Maida went to bed that night, she was surprised by a visit from her father.
"Posie," he said, sitting down on her bed, "did you really mean it to-day when you said you would like to keep a little shop?"
"Oh, yes, father! I've been thinking it over ever since I came home from our ride this afternoon. A little shop, you know, just like the one we saw to-day."
"Very well, dear, you shall keep a shop. You shall keep that very one. I'm going to buy out the business for you and