SAVE YOUR PENNIES
A CHRISTMAS FAIR
WILL BE HELD IN THIS SHOP
THE SATURDAY BEFORE
CHRISTMAS
DELICIOUS CANDIES MADE BY
MISS ROSIE BRINE
PAPER GOODS DESIGNED AND
EXECUTED BY
MASTER RICHARD DORE
WOOD DESIGNED AND
EXECUTED BY
MASTER ARTHUR DUNCAN
DON'T MISS IT!
This sign hung in Maida’s window for a week. Billy made it. The lettering was red and gold. In one corner, he painted a picture of a little boy and girl in their nightgowns up a chimney-place hung with stockings. In the other corner, the full-moon face of a Santa Claus popped like a jolly -in-the-box from a chimney-top. A troop of , dragging a sleigh full of toys, through the printing. The whole thing was enclosed in a wreath of .
The sign attracted a great deal of attention. Children were always stopping to admire it and even grown-people paused now and then. There was such a falling-off of Maida’s trade that she guessed that the children were really saving their pennies for the fair. This delighted her.
The W.M.N.T.’s wasted no time that last week in spite of a very snowstorm. Maida, of course, had nothing to do on her own account, but she worked with Dicky, morning and afternoon.
Rosie could not make candy until the last two or three days for fear it would get stale. Then she set to like a little whirlwind.
“My face is almost tanned from bending over the stove,” she said to Maida; “Aunt Theresa says if I cook another of candy, I’ll have a crop of .”
Arthur seemed to work the hardest of all because his work was so much more difficult. It took a great deal of time and strength and yet nobody could help him in it. The sound of his hammering came into Maida’s room early in the morning. It came in sometimes late at night when, cuddling between her blankets, she thought what a happy girl she was.
“I niver saw such foine, busy little folks,” Granny said approvingly again and again. “It moinds me av me own Annie. Niver a moment but that lass was working at some t’ing. Oh, I wonder what she’s doun’ and finking this Christmas.”
“Don’t you worry,” Maida always said. “Billy’ll find her for you yet—he said he would.”
Maida, herself, was giving, for the first time in her experience, a good deal of thought to Christmas time.
In the first place, she had sent the following invitation to every child in Court:
“Will you please come to my Christmas Tree to be given Christmas Night in the ‘Little Shop.’ Maida.”
In the second place, she was spying on all her friends, listening to their talk, watching them closely in work and play to find just the right thing to give them.
“Do you know, I never made a Christmas present in my life,” she said one day to Rosie.
“You never made a Christmas present?” Rosie repeated.
Maida’s quick perception sensed in Rosie’s face an unspoken of selfishness.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, Rosie dear,” Maida hastened to explain. “It was because I was too sick. You see, I was always in bed. I was too weak to make anything and I could not go out and buy presents as other children did. But people used to give me the loveliest things.”
“What did they give you?” Rosie asked .
“Oh, all kinds of things. Father’s given me an and a pair of Shetland and a family of twenty dolls and my weight in silver dollars. I can’t remember half the things I’ve had.”
“A pair of Shetland ponies, an automobile, a family of twenty dolls, your weight in silver dollars,” Rosie repeated after her. “Why, Maida, you’re dreaming or you’re out of your head.”
“Out of my head! Why, Rosie you’re out of your head. Don’t you suppose I know what I got for Christmas?” Maida’s eyes began to flash and her lips to tremble.
“Well, now, Maida, just think of it,” Rosie said in her most reasonable voice. “Here you are a little girl just like anybody else only you’re running a shop. Now just as if you could afford to have an automobile! Why, my father knows a man who knows another man who bought an automobile and it cost nine hundred dollars. What did yours cost?”
“Two thousand dollars.” Maida said this with a guilty air in spite of her knowledge of her own truth.
Rosie smiled roguishly. “Maida, dear,” she , “you dreamed it.”
Maida started to her feet. For a moment she came near saying something very indeed. But she remembered in time. Of course nobody in the neighborhood knew that she was “Buffalo” Westabrook’s daughter. It was impossible for her to prove any of her statements. The flash died out of her eyes. But another flash came into her cheeks—the flash of dimples.
“Well, perhaps I did dream it, Rosie,” she said archly. “But I don’t think I did,” she added in a quiet voice.
Rosie turned the subject tactfully. “What are you going to give your father?” she asked.
“That’s bothering me dreadfully,” Maida sighed; “I can’t think of anything he needs.”
“Why don’t you buy him the same thing I’m going to get my papa,” Rosie suggested eagerly. “That is, I’m going to buy it if I make enough money at the fair. Does your father shave himself?”
“Oh, Adolph, his valet, always shaves him,” Maida answered.
Rosie’s brow knit over the word valet—but Maida was always puzzling the neighborhood with strange expressions. Then her brow lightened. “My father goes to a barber, too,” she said. “I’ve heard him complaining lots of times how expensive it is. And the other day Arthur told me about a razor his father uses. He says it’s just like a lawn-mower or a carpet-sweeper. You don’t have to have anybody shave you if you have one of them. You run it right over your face and it takes all the beard off and doesn’t cut or anything. Now, wouldn’t you think that would be fun?”
“I should think it would be just lovely,” Maida agreed. “That’s just the thing for papa—for he is so busy. How much does it cost, Rosie?”
“About a dollar, Arthur thought. I never paid so much for a Christmas present in my life. And I’m not sure yet that I can get one. But if I do sell two dollars worth of candy, I can buy something beautiful for both father and mother.”
“Oh, Rosie,” Maida asked breathlessly, “do you mean that your mother’s come back?”
Rosie’s face changed. “Don’t you think I’d tell you that the first thing? No, she hasn’t come back and they don’t say anything about her coming back. But if she ever does come, I guess I’m going to have her Christmas present all ready for her.”
Maida patted her hand. “She’s coming back,” she said; “I know it.”
Rosie sighed. “You come down Main Street the night before Christmas. Dicky and I are going to buy our Christmas presents then and we can show you where to get the little razor.”
“I’d love to.” Maida beamed. And indeed, it seemed the most fascinating in the world to her. Every night after she went to bed, she thought it over. She was really going to buy Christmas presents without any grown-up person about to . It was .
The night before the fair, the children worked even harder than the night before Halloween, for there were so many things to display. It was evident that the stock would windows and shelves and show cases.
“We’ll bring the long kitchen table in for your things, Arthur,” Maida after a consideration of the subject. “Dicky’s and Rosie’s things ought to go on the shelves and into the show cases where nobody can handle them.”
They the table into the shop and covered it with a beautiful old blue counter-pane.
“That’s fine!” Arthur approved, his handicraft from the bushel-baskets in which he brought them.
The others stood round admiring the treasures and him to arrange them . A fleet of <............