Maida's Little Shop Part 27

One afternoon, after Thanksgiving, Maida ran over to d.i.c.ky's to borrow some pink tissue paper. She knocked gently. n.o.body answered.

But from the room came the sound of sobbing. Maida listened. It was d.i.c.ky's voice. At first she did not know what to do. Finally, she opened the door and peeped in. d.i.c.ky was sitting all crumpled up, his head resting on the table.

"Oh, what is the matter, d.i.c.ky?" Maida asked.

d.i.c.ky jumped. He raised his head and looked at her. His face was swollen with crying, his eyes red and heavy. For a moment he could not speak. Maida could see that he was ashamed of being caught in tears, that he was trying hard to control himself.

"It's something I heard," he replied at last.

"What?" Maida asked.

"Last night after I got to bed, Doc O'Brien came here to get his bill paid. Mother thought I was asleep and asked him a whole lot of questions. He told her that I wasn't any better and I never would be any better. He said that I'd be a cripple for the rest of my life."

In spite of all his efforts, d.i.c.ky's voice broke into a sob.

"Oh d.i.c.ky, d.i.c.ky," Maida said. Better than anybody else in the world, Maida felt that she could understand, could sympathize. "Oh, d.i.c.ky, how sorry I am!"

"I can't bear it," d.i.c.ky said.

He put his head down on the table and began to sob. "I can't bear it," he said. "Why, I thought when I grew up to be a man, I was going to take care of mother and Delia. Instead of that, they'll be taking care of me. What can a cripple do? Once I read about a crippled newsboy. Do you suppose I could sell papers?" he asked with a gleam of hope.

"I'm sure you could," Maida said heartily, "and a great many other things. But it may not be as bad as you think, d.i.c.ky. Dr. O'Brien may be mistaken. You know something was wrong with me when I was born and I did not begin to walk until a year ago. My father has taken me to so many doctors that I'm sure he could not remember half their names. But they all said the same thing-that I never would walk like other children. Then a very great physician-Dr.

Greinschmidt-came from away across the sea, from Germany. He said he could cure me and he did. I had to be operated on and-oh-I suffered dreadfully. But you see that I'm all well now. I'm even losing my limp. Now, I believe that Doctor Greinschmidt can cure you. The next time my father comes home I'm going to ask him."

d.i.c.ky had stopped crying. He was drinking down everything that she said. "Is he still here-that doctor?" he asked.

"No," Maida admitted sorrowfully. "But there must be doctors as good as he somewhere. But don't you worry about it at all, d.i.c.ky. You wait until my father sees you-he always gets everything made right."

"When's your father coming home?"

"I don't quite know-but I look for him any time now."

d.i.c.ky started to set the table. "I guess I wouldn't have cried," he said after a while, "if I could have cried last night when I first heard it. But of course I couldn't let mother or Doc O'Brien know that I'd heard them-it would make them feel bad. I don't want my mother ever to know that I know it."

After that, Maida redoubled her efforts to be nice to d.i.c.ky. She cudgeled her brains too for new decorative schemes for his paper-work. She asked Billy Potter to bring a whole bag of her books from the Beacon Street house and she lent them to d.i.c.ky, a half dozen at a time.

Indeed, they were a very busy quartette-the W.M.N.T.'s. Rosie went to school every day. She climbed out of her window no more at night.

She seemed to prefer helping Maida in the shop to anything else.

Arthur Duncan was equally industrious. With no Rosie to play hookey with, he, too, was driven to attending school regularly. His leisure hours were devoted to his whittling and wood-carving. He was always doing kind things for Maida and Granny, bringing up the coal, emptying the ashes, running errands.

And so November pa.s.sed into December.

CHAPTER XII: THE FIRST SNOW

"Look out the window, my lamb," Granny called one morning early in December. Maida opened her eyes, jumped obediently out of bed and pattered across the room. There, she gave a scream of delight, jumping up and down and clapping her hands.

"Snow! Oh goody, goody, goody! Snow at last!"

It looked as if the whole world had been wrapped in a blanket of the whitest, fleeciest, shiningest wool. Sidewalks, streets, crossings were all leveled to one smoothness. The fences were so m.u.f.fled that they had swelled to twice their size. The houses wore trim, pointy caps on their gables. The high bushes in the yard hung to the very ground. The low ones had become mounds. The trees looked as if they had been packed in cotton-wool and put away for the winter.

"And the lovely part of it is, it's still snowing," Maida exclaimed blissfully.

"Glory be, it'ull be a blizzard before we're t'rough wid ut," Granny said and shivered.

Maida dressed in the greatest excitement. Few children came in to make purchases that morning and the lines pouring into the schoolhouse were very shivery and much shorter than usual. At a quarter to twelve, the one-session bell rang. When the children came out of school at one, the snow was whirling down thicker and faster than in the morning. A high wind came up and piled it in the most unexpected places. Trade stopped entirely in the shop. No mother would let her children brave so terrific a storm.

It snowed that night and all the next morning. The second day fewer children went to school than on the first. But at two o'clock when the sun burst through the gray sky, the children swarmed the streets. Shovels and brooms began to appear, snow-b.a.l.l.s to fly, sleigh-bells to tinkle.

Rosie came dashing into the shop in the midst of this burst of excitement. "I've shoveled our sidewalk," she announced triumphantly. "Is anything wrong with me? Everybody's staring at me."

Maida stared too. Rosie's scarlet cape was dotted with snow, her scarlet hat was white with it. Great flakes had caught in her long black hair, had starred her soft brows-they hung from her very eyelashes. Her cheeks and lips were the color of coral and her eyes like great velvety moons.

"You look in the gla.s.s and see what they're staring at," Maida said slyly. Rosie went to the mirror.

"I don't see anything the matter."

"It's because you look so pretty, goose!" Maida exclaimed.

Rosie always blushed and looked ashamed if anybody alluded to her prettiness. Now she leaped to Maida's side and pretended to beat her.

"Stop that!" a voice called. Startled, the little girls looked up.

Billy stood in the doorway. "I've come over to make a snow-house,"

he explained.

"Oh, Billy, what things you do think of!" Maida exclaimed. "Wait till I get Arthur and d.i.c.ky!"

"Couldn't get many more in here, could we?" Billy commented when the five had a.s.sembled in the "child's size" yard. "I don't know that we could stow away another shovel. Now, first of all, you're to pile all the snow in the yard into that corner."

Everybody went to work. But Billy and Arthur moved so quickly with their big shovels that Maida and Rosie and d.i.c.ky did nothing but hop about them. Almost before they realized it, the snow-pile reached to the top of the fence.

"Pack it down hard," Billy commanded, "as hard as you can make it."

Everybody scrambled to obey. For a few moments the sound of shovels beating on the snow drowned their talk.

"That will do for that," Billy commanded suddenly. His little force stopped, breathless and red-cheeked. "Now I'm going to dig out the room. I guess I'll have to do this. If you're not careful enough, the roof will cave in. Then it's all got to be done again."

Working very slowly, he began to hollow out the structure. After the hole had grown big enough, he crawled into it. But in spite of his own warning, he must have been too energetic in his movements.

Suddenly the roof came down on his head.

Billy was on his feet in an instant, shaking the snow off as a dog shakes off water.

"Why, Billy, you look like a snow-man," Maida laughed.

"I feel like one," Billy said, wiping the snow from his eyes and from under his collar. "But don't be discouraged, my hearties, up with it again. I'll be more careful the next time."