away, dividing them with a careful justice. And, yet, whenever
children bought things of her in the shop, she always expected them
to pay the whole price. You can see how the neighborhood would
fairly buzz with talk about her.

As for Maida—with all this newness of friend-making and out-of-doors
games, it is not to be wondered that her head was a jumble at the
end of each day. In that delicious, dozy interval before she fell
asleep at night, all kinds of pretty pictures seemed to paint
themselves on her eyelids.

Now it was Rose-Red swaying like a great overgrown scarlet flower
from the bars of a lamp-post. Now it was Dicky hoisting himself
along on his crutches, his face alight with his radiant smile. Now
it was a line of laughing, rosy-cheeked children, as long as the
tail of a kite, pelting to goal at the magic cry “Liberty poles are
bending!” Or it was a group of little girls, setting out rows and
rows of bright-colored paper-dolls among the shadows of one of the
deep old doorways. But always in a few moments came the sweetest
kind of sleep. And always through her dreams flowed the plaintive
music of “Go in and out the windows.” Often she seemed to wake in
the morning to the Clarion cry, “Hoist the sail!”

It did not seem to Maida that the days were long enough to do all
the things she wanted to do.