Maida's Little Shop Part 16

"Haven't any dulse?" Laura repeated with an appearance of being greatly shocked. "Do you mean to say you haven't any dulse?"

Maida did not answer-she put her lips tight together.

"This is a healthy shop," Laura went on in a sneering tone, "no mollolligobs, no apple-on-the-stick, no tamarinds, no pop-corn b.a.l.l.s, no dulse. Why don't you sell the things we want? Half the children in the neighborhood are going down to Main Street to get them now."

She bustled out of the shop. Maida stared after her with wide, alarmed eyes. For a moment she did not stir. Then she ran into the living-room and buried her face in Granny's lap, bursting into tears.

"Oh, Granny," she sobbed, "Laura Lathrop says that half the children don't like my shop and they're going down to Main Street to buy things. What shall I do? What shall I do?"

"There, there, acushla," Granny said soothingly, taking the trembling little girl on to her lap. "Don't worry about anny t'ing that wan says. 'Tis a foine little shop you have, as all the grown folks says."

"But, Granny," Maida protested pa.s.sionately, "I don't want to please the grown people, I want to please the children. And papa said I must make the store pay. And now I'm afraid I never will. Oh, what shall I do?"

She got no further. A tinkle of the bell, followed by pattering footsteps, interrupted. In an instant, Rosie, brilliant in her scarlet cape and scarlet hat, with cheeks and lips the color of cherries, stood at her side.

"I saw that hateful Laura come out of here," she said. "I just knew she'd come in to make trouble. What did she say to you?"

Maida told her slowly between her sobs.

"Horrid little smarty-cat!" was Rosie's comment and she scowled until her face looked like a thunder-cloud.

"I shall never speak to her again," Maida declared fervently. "But what shall I do about it, Rosie?-it may be true what she said."

"Now don't you get discouraged, Maida," Rosie said. "Because I can tell you just how to get or make those things Laura spoke of."

"Oh, can you, Rosie. What would I do without you? I'll put everything down in a book so that I shan't forget them."

She limped over to the desk. There the black head bent over the golden one.

"What is dulse?" Maida demanded first.

"Don't you know what dulse is?" Rosie asked incredulously. "Maida, you are the queerest child. The commonest things you don't know anything about. And yet I suppose if I asked you if you'd seen a flying-machine, you'd say you had."

"I have," Maida answered instantly, "in Paris."

Rosie's face wrinkled into its most perplexed look. She changed the subject at once. "Well, dulse is a purple stuff-when you see a lot of it together, it looks as if a million toy-balloons had burst.

It's all wrinkled up and tastes salty."

Maida thought hard for a moment. Then she burst into laughter, although the big round tear-drops were still hanging from the tips of her lashes. "There was a whole drawerful here when I first came.

I remember now I thought it was waste stuff and threw it all away."

Rosie laughed too. "The tamarinds you can get from the man who comes round with the wagon. Mrs. Murdock used to make her own apples-on-the-stick, mollolligobs and corn-b.a.l.l.s. I've helped her many a time. Now I'll write you a list of stuff to order from the grocer. I'll come round after school and we'll make a batch of all those things.

To-night you get Billy to print a sign, '_apples on the stick and mollolligobs to-day_.' You put that in the window to-morrow morning and by to-morrow night, you'll be all sold out."

"Oh, Rosie," Maida said happily, "I shall be so much obliged to you!"

Rosie was as good as her word. She appeared that afternoon wearing a long-sleeved ap.r.o.n under the scarlet cape. It seemed to Maida that she worked like lightning, for she made batch after batch of candy, moving as capably about the stove as an experienced cook. In the meantime, Maida was popping corn at the fireplace. They mounted fifty apples on skewers and dipped them, one at a time, into the boiling candy. They made thirty corn-b.a.l.l.s and twenty-five mollolligobs, which turned out to be round chunks of candy, stuck on the end of sticks.

"I never did see such clever children anywhere as there are in Primrose Court," Maida said that night with a sigh to Granny. "Rosie told me that she could make six kinds of candy. And d.i.c.ky can cook as well as his mother. They make me feel so useless. Why, Granny, I can't do a single thing that's any good to anybody."

The next day the shop was crowded. By night there was not an apple, a corn-ball or a mollolligob left.

"I shall have a sale like this once a week in the future," Maida said. "Why, Granny, lots and lots of children came here who'd never been in the shop before."

And so what looked like serious trouble ended very happily.

Trouble number three was a great deal more serious and it did not, at first, promise to end well at all. It had to do with Arthur Duncan. It had been going on for a week before Maida mentioned it to anybody. But it haunted her very dreams.

Early Monday morning, Arthur came into the shop. In his usual gruff voice and with his usual surly manner, he said, "Show me some of those rubbers in the window."

Maida took out a handful of the rubbers-five, she thought-and put them on the counter. While Arthur looked them over, she turned to replace a paper-doll which she had knocked down.

"Guess I won't take one to-day," Arthur said, while her back was still turned, and walked out.

When Maida put the rubbers back, she discovered that there were only four. She made up her mind that she had not counted right and thought no more of the incident.

Two days later, Arthur Duncan came in again. Maida had just been selling some pencils-pretty striped ones with a blue stone in the end. Three of them were left lying out on the counter. Arthur asked her to show him some penholders. Maida took three from the shelves back of her. He bought one of these. After he had gone, she discovered that there were only two pencils left on the counter.

"One of them must have rolled off," Maida thought. But although she looked everywhere, she could not find it. The incident of the rubber occurred to her. She felt a little troubled but she resolved to put both circ.u.mstances out of her mind.

A day or two later, Arthur Duncan came in for the third time. It happened that Granny was out marketing.

Piled on the counter was a stack of blank-books-pretty books they were, with a child's head in color on the cover. Arthur asked for letter-paper. Maida turned back to the shelf. With her hand on the sliding door, she stopped, half-stunned.

_Reflected in the gla.s.s she saw Arthur Duncan stow one of the blank books away in his pocket._

Maida felt sick all over. She did not know what to do. She did not know what to say.

She fumbled with trembling hands among the things on the shelf. She dreaded to turn for fear her face would express what she had seen.

"Perhaps he'll pay for it," she thought; "I hope he will."

But Arthur made no offer to pay. He looked over the letter-paper that Maida, with downcast eyes, put before him, decided that he did not want any after all, and walked coolly from the shop.

Granny, coming in a few moments later, was surprised to find Maida leaning on the counter, her face buried in her hands.

"What's the matter with my lamb?" the old lady asked cheerfully.

"Nothing, Granny," Maida said. But she did not meet Granny's eye and during dinner she was quiet and serious.

That night Billy Potter called. "Well, how goes the _Bon Marche of_ Charlestown?" he asked cheerfully.

"Billy," Maida said gravely, "if you found that a little boy-I can't say what his name is-was stealing from you, what would you do?"

Billy considered the question as gravely as she had asked it. "Tell the policeman on the beat and get him to throw a scare into him," he said at last.

"I guess that's what I'll have to do." But Maida's tone was mournful.

But Granny interrupted.