Children of the rich -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Sick children -- Juvenile fiction
Halloween fell on Saturday that year. That made Friday a very busy
time for Maida and the other members of the W.M.N.T. In the
afternoon, they all worked like beavers making jack-o’-lanterns of
the dozen pumpkins that Granny had ordered. Maida and Rosie and
Dicky hollowed and scraped them. Arthur did all the hard work—the
cutting out of the features, the putting-in of candle-holders. These
pumpkin lanterns were for decoration. But Maida had ordered many
paper jack-o’-lanterns for sale. The W.M.N.T.’s spent the evening
rearranging the shop. Maida went to bed so tired that she could
hardly drag one foot after the other. Granny had to undress her.
But when the school-children came flocking in the next morning, she
felt more than repaid for her work. The shop resounded with the “Oh
mys,” and “Oh looks,” of their surprise and delight.
Indeed, the room seemed full of twinkling yellow faces. Lines of
them grinned in the doorway. Rows of them smirked from the shelves.
A frieze, close-set as peas in a pod, grimaced from the molding. The
jolly-looking pumpkin jacks, that Arthur had made, were piled in a
pyramid in the window. The biggest of them all—“he looks just like
the man in the moon,” Rosie said—smiled benignantly at the
passers-by from the top of the heap. Standing about everywhere among
the lanterns were groups of little paper brownies, their tiny heads
turned upwards as if, in the greatest astonishment, they were
examining these monster beings.
The jack-o’-lanterns sold like hot cakes. As for the brownies,
“Granny, you’d think they were marching off the shelves!” Maida
said. By dark, she was diving breathlessly into her surplus stock.
At the first touch of twilight, she lighted every lantern left in
the place. Five minutes afterwards, a crowd of children had gathered
to gaze at the flaming faces in the window. Even the grown-ups
stopped to admire the effect.
More customers came and more—a great many children whom Maida had
never seen before. By six o’clock, she had sold out her entire
stock. When she sat down to dinner that night, she was a very happy
little girl.
“This is the best day I’ve had since I opened the shop,” she said
contentedly. She was not tired, though. “I feel just like going to a
party to-night. Granny, can I wear my prettiest Roman sash?”
“You can wear annyt’ing you want, my lamb,” Granny said, “for ’tis
the good, busy little choild you’ve been this day.”
Granny dressed her according to Maida’s choice, in white. A very,
simple, soft little frock, it was, with many tiny tucks made by hand
and many insertions of a beautiful, fine lace. Maida chose to wear
with it pale blue silk stockings and slippers, a sash of blue,
striped in pink and white, a string of pink Venetian beads.
“Now, Granny, I’ll read until the children call for me,” she
suggested, “so I won’t rumple my dress.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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