The next day it rained . Maida had been running the shop for three weeks but this was her first experience with stormy weather. Because she, herself, had never been allowed to set her foot outdoors when the weather was damp, she expected that she would see no children that day. But long before the bell rang they crowded in wet streaming groups into the shop. And at nine the lines disappearing into the big school seemed as long as ever.  
Even the Clark twins in rubber boots, long rain-capes and a baby umbrella came in to spend their daily pennies.
 
“I guess it’ll be one session, Maida,” Dorothy whispered.
 
“Oh goody, Dorothy!” Mabel lisped. “Don’t you love one session, Maida?”
 
Maida was ashamed to confess to two such tiny girls that she did not know what “one session” meant. But she puzzled over it the whole morning. If Rosie and Arthur had come in she would have asked them. But neither of them appeared. Indeed, they were not anywhere in the lines—Maida looked very carefully.
 
At twelve o’clock the school bell did not ring. In surprise, Maida craned out of the window to consult the big church clock. It agreed exactly with the tall grandfather’s clock in the living-room. Both to twelve, then to five minutes after and ten and fifteen—still no bell.
 
A little later Dicky came swinging along, the sides of his old raincoat flapping like the wings of some great bird.
 
“It’s one-session, Maida,” he said jubilantly, “did you hear the bell?”
 
“What’s one session, Dicky?” Maida asked.
 
“Why, when it’s too stormy for the children to go to school in the afternoon the fire-bells ring twenty-two at quarter to twelve. They keep all the classes in until one o’clock though.”
 
“Oh, that’s why they don’t come out,” Maida said.
 
At one o’clock the umbrellas began to file out of the school door. The street looked as if it had grown a monster crop of shiny black toad-stools. But it was the only sign of life that the neighborhood showed for the rest of the day. The storm was too violent for even the big boys and girls to brave. A very long afternoon went by. Not a customer came into the shop. Maida felt very lonely. She wandered from shop to living-room and from living-room to . She tried to read. She sewed a little. She even popped corn for a lonesome fifteen minutes. But it seemed as if the long dark day would never go.
 
As they were sitting down to dinner that night, Billy bounced in—his face pink and wet, his eyes sparkling like diamonds from his conflict with the winds.
 
“Oh, Billy, how glad I am to see you,” Maida said. “It’s been the lonesomest day.”
 
“Sure, the sight av ye’s grand for sore eyes,” said Granny.
 
Maida had noticed that Billy’s appearance always made the greatest difference in everything. Before he came, the noise of the wind howling about the store made Maida sad. Now it seemed the jolliest of sounds. And when at seven, Rosie appeared, Maida’s cup of happiness brimmed over.
 
While Billy talked with Granny, the two little girls rearranged the stock.
 
“My mother was awful mad with me just before supper,” Rosie began at once. “It seems as if she was so cross lately that there’s no living with her. She picks on me all the time. That’s why I’m here. She sent me to bed. But I made up my mind I wouldn’t go to bed. I climbed out my bedroom window and came over here.”
 
“Oh, Rosie, I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Maida said. “Oh, do run right home! Think how worried your mother would be if she went up into your room and found you gone. She wouldn’t know what had become of you.”
 
“Well, then, what makes her so strict with me?” Rosie cried. Her eyes had grown as black as thunder clouds. The that made her face so had come deep between her .
 
“Oh, how I wish I had a mother,” Maida said . “I guess I wouldn’t say a word to her, no matter how strict she was.”
 
“I guess you don’t know what you’d do until you tried it,” Rosie said.
 
Granny and Billy had been quiet in the other room. Suddenly Billy Potter stepped to the door.
 
“I’ve just thought of a great game, children,” he said. “But we’ve got to play it in the kitchen. Bring some crayons, Maida.”
 
The children raced after him. “What is it?” they asked in chorus.
 
Billy did not answer. He lifted Granny’s easy-chair with Granny, knitting and all, and placed it in front of the kitchen stove. Then he began to draw a huge rectangle on the clean, stone floor.
 
“Guess,” he said.
 
“Sure and Oi know what ut’s going to be,” smiled Granny.
 
Maida and Rosie watched him closely. Suddenly they both shouted together:
 
“! Hopscotch!”
 
“Right you are!” Billy approved. He searched among the coals in the hod until he found a hard piece of .
 
“All ready now!” he said briskly. “Your turn, first, Rosie, because you’re company.”
 
Rosie failed on “fivesy.” Maida’s turn came next and she failed on “threesy.” Billy followed Maida but he on the line on “twosy.”
 
“Oi belave Oi cud play that game, ould as Oi am,” Granny said suddenly.
 
“I bet you could,” Billy said.
 
“Sure, ’twas a foine player Oi was when Oi was a little colleen.”
 
“Come on, Granny,” Billy said.
 
The two little girls jumped up and down, clapping their hands and , “Granny’s going to play!” “Granny’s going to play!” They made so much noise finally, that Billy had to threaten to stand them on their heads in a corner.
 
Granny took her turn after Billy. She hopped about like a very active and a very old fairy.
 
“Oh, doesn’t she look like the in fairy tales?” Maida said.
 
They played for a half an hour. And who do you suppose won? Not Maida with all her new-found strength, not Rosie with all her nervous energy, not Billy with all his training.
 
“Mrs. Delia Flynn, champion of America and Ireland,” Billy greeted the victor. “Granny, we’ll have to enter you in the next Olympic games.”
 
They returned after this breathless work to the living-room.
 
“Now I’m going to tell you a story,” Billy announced.
 
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Maida . “Do! Billy tells the most wonderful stories, Rosie—stories he’s heard and stories he’s read. But the most wonderful ones are those that he makes up as he goes along.”
 
The two little girls settled themselves on the hearth-rug at Billy’s feet. Granny sat, not far off, working with double speed at her neglected knitting.
 
“Once upon a time,” Billy said, “there lived a little girl named Klara. And Klara was the naughtiest little girl in the world. She was a pretty child and a clever child and everybody would have loved her if she had only given them a chance. But how can you love a child who is doing naughty things all the time? Particularly was she a great trial to her mother. That poor lady was not well and needed care and attention, herself. But instead of giving her these, Klara gave her only hard words and disobedient acts. The mother used sometimes to punish her little daughter but it seemed as if this only made her worse. Both father and mother were in despair about her. Klara seemed to be growing worse and worse. And, indeed, lately, she had added to her naughtiness by threatening to run away.
 
“One night, it happened, Klara had been so bad that her mother had put her to bed early. The moment her mother left the room, Klara whipped over to the window. ‘I’m going to dress myself and climb out the window and run away and never come back,’ she said to herself.’
 
“The house in which Klara lived was built on the side of a cliff, overlooking the sea. As Klara stood there in her nightgown the moon began to rise and come up out of the water. Now the moonrise is always a beautiful sight and Klara stopped for a moment to watch it, fascinated.
 
“It seemed to her that she had never seen the moon look so big before. And certainly she had never seen it such a color—a soft deep orange. In fact, it might have been an immense orange—or better, a monster stuck on the horizon-line.
 
“The strange thing about the moon, though, was that it grew larger instead of smaller. It rose higher and higher, growing bigger and bigger, until it was half-way up the curve of the sky. Then it stopped short. Klara watched it, her eyes out of her head. In all her experience she had never seen such a surprising thing. And while she watched, another thing happened. A great door in the moon opened suddenly and there on the threshold stood a little old lady. A strange little old lady she was—a little old lady with short red skirts and high, gayly-flowered draperies at her waist, a little old lady with a tall black, sugar-loaf hat, a great white ruff around her neck and little red shoes with bright silver on them—a little old lady who carried a black cat perched on one shoulder and a broomstick in one hand.
 
“The little old lady stooped down and lifted something over the threshold. Klara strained her eyes to see what it was. It looked like a great roll of golden carpeting. With a sudden movement the little old lady threw it out of the door. It flew straight across the ocean, unrolling as swiftly as a ball of that you’ve flung across the room. It came nearer and nearer. The farther it got from the moon, the faster it unrolled. After a while it struck against the shore right under Klara’s window and Klara saw that it was the wake of the moon. She watched.
 
“The little old lady had disappeared from the in the moon but the door did not close. And, suddenly, still another wonderful thing happened. The golden wake lifted itself gradually from the water until it was on a level with Klara’s window. Bending down she touched it with both her soft little hands. It was as firm and hard as if it had been woven from of gold.
 
“‘Now’s my time to run away from my cross mother,’ Klara said to herself. ‘I guess that nice old lady in the moon wants me to come and be her little girl. Well, I’ll go. I guess they’ll be sorry in this house to-morrow when they wake up and find they’re never going to see me again.’
 
“Opening the window gently that nobody might hear her, she stepped on to the Wake of Gold. It felt cool and hard to her little bare feet. It inclined gently from her window. She ran down the slope until she reached the edge of the sea. There she hesitated. For a moment it seemed a daring thing to walk straight out to the moon with nothing between her and the water but a path of gold. Then she recalled how her mother had sent her to bed and her heart hardened. She started briskly out.
 
“From Klara’s window it had looked as though it would take her only a few moments to get to the moon. But the farther she went, the farther from her the doorway seemed to go. But she did not mind that the walk was so long because it was so pretty. Looking over the edge of the Wake of Gold, deep down in the water, she could see all kind............