“When we were going to school,” put in Laura Lathrop, “it was bad enough. But we didn’t have time to miss her so much then. But now that school’s over and there’s nothing to do--Oh, how I wish she were here!” “Well, what good would it do?” Harold Lathrop asked. Harold and Laura looked much alike although Laura was slim and brown-haired and Harold flaxen and a little stout. But both had blue eyes and small, regular features. “We wouldn’t see anything of her,” Harold continued, “she’d he going away somewhere for the summer and we wouldn’t have a chance to get to know her until fall.” “Maida’d never do that,” Rosie Brine declared emphatically. “She’d manage some way to be with us for a while.” She brought the hammock to a stop for a moment with the swift kick of a determined foot against a tuft of grass. “There’s one thing I am sure of and that is that Maida would never forget us or want to be away from us. She says that in every letter I’ve got from her.” “Well, what are we going to do to-day?” Harold demanded. “I should think from the way we sit here that we had not been counting up the days to vacation for a month. Why Laura’s even had the hours all numbered out on her calendar, so’s she could draw a line through them every night.” “I wanted to have the minutes marked out too,” Laura admitted, “but it took too much time.” “What are we going to do?” Harold persisted. “Here it is the first day of vacation, and we sit here saying nothing. You think of something, Arthur, you always can.” Arthur Duncan rolled over face downwards on the grass. “I can’t think of anything to do this morning,” he admitted. “It’s so hot ... and I feel so lazy ... seems to me I’d just like to lie here all day.” It was hot that late June day in Charlestown. Not a breeze stirred the shrubs of the Lathrop lawn. The June roses drooped; the leaves seemed wilting; even the blue sky looked thick and sultry. Huge white clouds moved across it so lazily that it was as though they too felt the general languor. The children looked as children generally look at the close of school, pale and a little tired. Their movements were listless. Just outside the gate of the Lathrop place was Primrose Court; a little court, lined with maples and horse-chestnuts with shady little wooden houses set behind tiny gardens, in their turn set within white wooden fences. At one corner of Primrose Court and Warrington Street, set directly opposite a school house, was a little shop. And over the shop printed in gold letters against a background of sky blue, hung a sign which read: MAIDA’S LITTLE SHOP