I fell and broke my arm.”

Maida’s eyes brightened. “And there’s the garret window where the squirrels used to come in,” she exclaimed.

“The same!” Dr. Pierce laughed. “You don’t forget anything, do you? My goodness me! How small the house looks and how narrow the street has grown! Even the trees aren’t as tall as they should be.”

Maida stared. The trees looked very high indeed to her. And she thought the street quite wide enough for anybody, the houses very stately.

“Now show me the school,” she begged.

“Just a block or two, Henri,” Dr. Pierce directed.

The car stopped in front of a low, rambling wooden building with a yard in front.

“That’s where you covered the ceiling with spit-balls,” Maida asked.

“The same!” Dr. Pierce laughed heartily at the remembrance. It seemed to Maida that she had never seen his curls bob quite so furiously before.

“It’s one of the few wooden, primary buildings left in the city,” he explained to the two men. “It can’t last many years now. It’s nothing but a rat-trap but how I shall hate to see it go!”

Opposite the school was a big, wide court. Shaded with beautiful trees—maples beginning to flame, horse-chestnuts a little browned, it was lined with wooden toy houses, set back of fenced-in yards and veiled by climbing vines. Pigeons were flying about, alighting now and then to peck at the ground or to preen their green and purple necks. Boys were spinning tops. Girls were jumping rope. The dust they kicked up had a sweet, earthy smell in Maida’s nostrils. As she stared, charmed with the picture, a little girl in a scarlet cape and a scarlet hat came climbing up over one of the fences. Quick, active as a squirrel, she disappeared into the next yard.

“Primrose Court!” Dr. Pierce exclaimed. “Well, well, well!”

“Primrose Court,” Maida repeated. “Do primroses grow there?”

“Bless your heart, no,” Dr. Pierce laughed; “it was named after a man called Primrose who used to own a great deal of the neighborhood.”

But Maida was scarcely listening. “Oh, what a cunning little shop!” she exclaimed. “There, 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.

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 put you in charge there. I’ve got to be in New York pretty steadily for the next three months and I’ve decided that I’ll send you and Granny to live in the rooms over the shop. I’ll fix the place all up for you, give you plenty of money to stock it and then I expect you to run it and make it pay.”

Maida sat up in bed with a vigor that surprised her father. She shook her hands—a gesture that, with her, meant great delight. She laughed. It was the first time in months that a happy note had pealed in her laughter. “Oh, father,