Now it was Rose-Red swaying like a great overgrown scarlet flower from the bars of a lamp-post. Now it was Dicky hoisting himself along on his crutches, his face alight with his radiant smile. Now it was a line of laughing, rosy-cheeked children, as long as the tail of a kite, pelting to goal at the magic cry “Liberty poles are bending!” Or it was a group of little girls, setting out rows and rows of bright-colored paper-dolls among the shadows of one of the deep old doorways. But always in a few moments came the sweetest kind of sleep. And always through her dreams flowed the plaintive music of “Go in and out the windows.” Often she seemed to wake in the morning to the Clarion cry, “Hoist the sail!” It did not seem to Maida that the days were long enough to do all the things she wanted to do. CHAPTER VI: TWO CALLS One morning, Laura Lathrop came bustling importantly into the shop. “Good morning, Maida,” she said; “you may come over to my house this afternoon and play with me if you’d like.” “Thank you, Laura,” Maida answered. To anybody else, she would have added, “I shall be delighted to come.” But to Laura, she only said, “It is kind of you to ask me.” “From about two until four,” Laura went on in her most superior tone. “I suppose you can’t get off for much longer than that.” “Granny is always willing to wait on customers if I want to play,” Maida explained, “but I think she would not want me to stay longer than that, anyway.” “Very well, then. Shall we say at two?” Laura said this with a very grown-up air. Maida knew that she was imitating her mother. Laura had scarcely left when Dicky appeared, swinging between his crutches. “Maida,” he said, “I want you to come over to-morrow afternoon and see my place. You’ve not seen Delia yet and there’s a whole lot of things I want to show you. I’m going to clean house to-day so’s I’ll be all ready for you to-morrow.” “Oh, thank you,” Maida said. The sparkle that always meant delight came into her face. “I shall be delighted. I’ve always wanted to go over and see you ever since I first knew you. But Granny said to wait until you invited me. And I really have never seen Delia except when Rosie’s had her in the carriage. And then she’s always been asleep.” “You have to see Delia in the house to know what a naughty baby she is,” Dicky said. He spoke as if that were the finest tribute that he could pay his little sister. “Granny,” Maida said that noon at lunch, “Laura Lathrop came here and invited me to come to see her this afternoon and I just hate the thought of going—I don’t know why. Then Dicky came and invited me to come and see him to-morrow afternoon and I just love the thought of going. Isn’t it strange?” “Very,” Granny said, smiling. “But you be sure to be a noice choild this afternoon, no matter what that wan says to you.” Granny always referred to Laura as “that wan.”