At the end of the first fortnight, the neighborhood had accepted Granny and Maida as the mother-in-law and daughter of a “traveling man.” From the beginning Granny had seemed one of them, but Maida was a puzzle. The children could not understand how a little girl could be grown-up and babyish at the same time. And if you stop to think it over, perhaps you can understand how they felt. Here was a child who had never played, “London-Bridge-is-falling-down” or jackstones or jump-rope or hop-scotch. Yet she talked familiarly of automobiles, yachts and horses. She knew nothing about geography and yet, her conversation was full of such phrases as “The spring we were in Paris” or “The winter we spent in Rome.” She knew nothing about nouns and verbs but she talked Italian fluently with the hand-organ man who came every week and many of her books were in French. She knew nothing about fractions or decimals, yet she referred familiarly to “drawing checks,” to gold eagles and to Wall Street. Her writing was so bad that the children made fun of it, yet she could spin off a letter of eight pages in a flash. And she told the most wonderful fairy-tales that had ever been heard in Primrose Court. Because of all these things the children had a kind of contempt for her mingled with a curious awe. She was so polite with grown people that it was fairly embarrassing. She always arose from her chair when they entered the room, always picked up the things they dropped and never interrupted. And yet she could carry on a long conversation with them. She never said, “Yes, ma’am,” or “No, ma’am.” Instead, she said, “Yes, Mrs. Brine,” or “No, Miss Allison,” and she looked whomever she was talking with straight in the eye. She would play with the little children as willingly as with the bigger ones. Often when the older girls and boys were in school, she would bring out a lapful of toys and spend the whole morning with the little ones. When Granny called her, she would give all the toys away, dividing them with a careful justice. And, yet, whenever children bought things of her in the shop, she always expected them to pay the whole price. You can see how the neighborhood would fairly buzz with talk about her. As for Maida—with all this newness of friend-making and out-of-doors games, it is not to be wondered that her head was a jumble at the end of each day. In that delicious, dozy interval before she fell asleep at night, all kinds of pretty pictures seemed to paint themselves on her eyelids.