They watched. It took a long time, but Delia sat down, giving her whole attention to it. Finally her busy fingers pulled off so much paper that a pair of tiny rubber dolls dropped into her lap. “Say ‘Thank you, Maida,’” Dicky prompted. Delia said something and Dicky assured her that the baby had obeyed him. It sounded like, “Sank-oo-Maysa.” While Delia occupied herself with the dolls, Maida listened to Dicky’s reading lesson. He was getting on beautifully now. At least he could puzzle out by himself some of the stories that Maida lent him. When they had finished that day’s fairy-tale, Dicky said: “Did you ever see a peacock, Maida?” “Oh, yes—a great many.” “Where?” “I saw ever so many in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and then my father has some in his camp in the Adirondacks.” “Has he many?” “A dozen.” “I’m just wild to see one. Are they as beautiful as that picture in the fairy-tale?” “They’re as beautiful as—as—” Maida groped about in her mind to find something to compare them to “—as angels,” she said at last. “And do they really open their tails like a fan?” “That is the most wonderful sight, Dicky, that you ever saw.” Maida’s manner was almost solemn. “When they unfurl the whole fan and the sun shines on all the green and blue eyes and on all the little gold feathers, it’s so beautiful. Well, it makes you ache. I _cried_ the first time I saw one. And when their fans are down, they carry them so daintily, straight out, not a single feather trailing on the ground. There are two white peacocks on the Adirondacks place.” “_White_ peacocks! I never heard of white ones.” “They’re not common.” “Think of seeing a dozen peacocks every day!” Dicky exclaimed. “Jiminy crickets! Why, Maida, your life must have been just like a fairy-tale when you lived there.” “It seems more like a fairy-tale here.” They laughed at this difference of opinion. “Dicky,” Maida asked suddenly, “do you know that Rosie steals out of her window at night sometimes when her mother doesn’t know it?” “Sure—I know that. You see,” he went on to explain, “it’s like this. Rosie is an awful bad girl in some ways—there’s no doubt about that. But my mother says Rosie isn’t as bad as she seems. My mother says Rosie’s mother has never learned how to manage her. She whips Rosie an awful lot. And the more she whips Rosie, the naughtier she gets. Rosie says she’s going to run away some day, and by George, I bet she’ll do it. She always does what she says she’ll do.” “Isn’t it dreadful?” Maida said in a frightened tone. “Run away! I never heard of such a thing. Think of having a mother and then not getting along with her. Suppose she died sometime, as my mother did.” “I don’t know what I’d do without my mother,” Dicky said thoughtfully. “But then I’ve got the best mother that ever was. I wish she didn’t have to work so hard. But you wait until I get on my feet. Then you’ll see how I’m going to earn money for her.”