and round in her swivel-chair:

“Oh, Granny, do you think _anybody’s_ going to buy _anything_
to-day?”

Next I think you would have noticed an old woman who kept coming to
the living-room door—an old woman in a black gown and a white apron
so stiffly starched that it rattled when it touched anything—an old
woman with twinkling blue eyes and hair, enclosing, as in a silver
frame, a little carved nut of a face—an old woman who kept soothing
the little girl with a cheery:

“Now joost you be patient, my lamb, sure somebody’ll be here soon.”

The shop was unchanged since yesterday, except for a big bowl of
asters, red, white and blue.

“Three cheers for the red, white and blue,” Maida sang when she
arranged them. She had been singing at intervals ever since.
Suddenly the latch slipped. The bell rang.

Maida jumped. Then she sat so still in her high chair that you would
have thought she had turned to stone. But her eyes, glued to the
moving door, had a look as if she did not know what to expect.

The door swung wide. A young man entered. It was Billy Potter.

He walked over to the show case, his hat in his hand. And all the
time he looked Maida straight in the eye. But you would have thought
he had never seen her before.