Maida's Little Shop.

by Inez Haynes Irwin.

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 ma.s.s 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 b.u.t.ton. 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 way he asked this question that he was not accustomed to take advice from other people. Indeed, he did not look it. But he looked his name. You would know at once why the cartoonists always represented him with the head of a buffalo; why, gradually, people had forgotten that his first name was Jerome and referred to him always as "Buffalo" Westabrook.

Like the buffalo, his head was big and powerful and emerged from the midst of a s.h.a.ggy mane. But it was the way in which it was set on his tremendous shoulders that gave him his nickname. When he spoke to you, he looked as if he were about to charge. And the glance of his eyes, set far back of a huge nose, cut through you like a pair of knives.

It surprised Maida very much when she found that people stood in awe of her father. It had never occurred to her to be afraid of him.

"I've racked my brains to entertain her," "Buffalo" Westabrook went on. "I've bought her every gimcrack that's made for children-her nursery looks like a toy factory. I've bought her prize ponies, prize dogs and prize cats-rabbits, guinea-pigs, dancing mice, talking parrots, marmosets-there's a young menagerie at the place in the Adirondacks. I've had a doll-house and a little theater built for her at Pride's. She has her own carriage, her own automobile, her own railroad car. She can have her own flying-machine if she wants it. I've taken her off on trips. I've taken her to the theater and the circus. I've had all kinds of nurses and governesses and companions, but they've been mostly failures. Granny Flynn's the best of the hired people, but of course Granny's old. I've had other children come to stay with her. Selfish little brutes they all turned out to be! They'd play with her toys and ignore her completely. And this fall I brought her to Boston, hoping her cousins would rouse her. But the Fairfaxes decided suddenly to go abroad this winter. If she'd only express a desire for something, I'd get it for her-if it were one of the moons of Jupiter."

"It isn't anything you can _give_ her," Dr. Pierce said impatiently; "you must find something for her to _do_."

"Say, Billy, you're an observant little duck. Can't you tell us what's the matter?" "Buffalo" Westabrook smiled down at the third man of the party.

"The trouble with the child," Billy Potter said promptly, "is that everything she's had has been 'prize.' Not that it's spoiled her at all. Petronilla is as simple as a princess in a fairy-tale."

"Petronilla" was Billy Potter's pet-name for Maida.

"Yes, she's wonderfully simple," Dr. Pierce agreed. "Poor little thing, she's lived in a world of bottles and splints and bandages.

She's never had a chance to realize either the value or the worthlessness of things."

"And then," Billy went on, "n.o.body's ever used an ounce of imagination in entertaining the poor child."

"Imagination!" "Buffalo" Westabrook growled. "What has imagination to do with it?"

Billy grinned.

Next to her father and Granny Flynn, Maida loved Billy Potter better than anybody in the world. He was so little that she could never decide whether he was a boy or a man. His chubby, dimply face was the pinkest she had ever seen. From it twinkled a pair of blue eyes the merriest she had ever seen. And falling continually down into his eyes was a great ma.s.s of flaxen hair, the most tousled she had ever seen.

Billy Potter lived in New York. He earned his living by writing for newspapers and magazines. Whenever there was a fuss in Wall Street-and the papers always blamed "Buffalo" Westabrook if this happened-Billy Potter would have a talk with Maida's father. Then he wrote up what Mr. Westabrook said and it was printed somewhere. Men who wrote for the newspapers were always trying to talk with Mr.

Westabrook. Few of them ever got the chance. But "Buffalo"

Westabrook never refused to talk with Billy Potter. Indeed, the two men were great friends.

"He's one of the few reporters who can turn out a good story and tell it straight as I give it to him," Maida had once heard her father say. Maida knew that Billy could turn out good stories-he had turned out a great many for her.

"What has imagination to do with it?" Mr. Westabrook repeated.

"It would have a great deal to do with it, I fancy," Billy Potter answered, "if somebody would only imagine the right thing."

"Well, imagine it yourself," Mr. Westabrook snarled. "Imagination seems to be the chief stock-in-trade of you newspaper men."

Billy grinned. When Billy smiled, two things happened-one to you and the other to him. Your spirits went up and his eyes seemed to disappear. Maida said that Billy's eyes "skrinkled up." The effect was so comic that she always laughed-not with him but at him.

"All right," Billy agreed pleasantly; "I'll put the greatest creative mind of the century to work on the job."

"You put it to work at once, young man," Dr. Pierce said. "The thing I'm trying to impress on you both is that you can't wait too long."

"Buffalo" Westabrook stirred uneasily. His fierce, blue eyes retreated behind the frown in his thick brows until all you could see were two shining points. He watched Maida closely as she limped back to the car. "What are you thinking of, Posie?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing, father," Maida said, smiling faintly. This was the answer she gave most often to her father's questions. "Is there anything you want, Posie?" he was sure to ask every morning, or, "What would you like me to get you to-day, little daughter?" The answer was invariable, given always in the same soft, thin little voice: "Nothing, father-thank you."

"Where are we now, Jerome?" Dr. Pierce asked suddenly.

Mr. Westabrook looked about him. "Getting towards Revere."

"Let's go home through Charlestown," Dr. Pierce suggested. "How would you like to see the house where I was born, Maida-that old place on Warrington Street I told you about yesterday. I think you'd like it, Pinkwink."

"Pinkwink" was Dr. Pierce's pet-name for Maida.

"Oh, I'd love to see it." A little thrill of pleasure sparkled in Maida's flat tones. "I'd just love to."

Dr. Pierce gave some directions to the chauffeur.

For fifteen minutes or more the men talked business. They had come away from the sea and the streams of yellow and red and green trees.

Maida pillowed her head on the cushions and stared fixedly at the pa.s.sing streets. But her little face wore a dreamy, withdrawn look as if she were seeing something very far away. Whenever "Buffalo"

Westabrook's glance shot her way, his thick brows pulled together into the frown that most people dreaded to face.

"Now down the hill and then to the left," Dr. Pierce instructed Henri.