wait until you invited me. And I really have never seen Delia except
when Rosie’s had her in the carriage. And then she’s always been
asleep.”

“You have to see Delia in the house to know what a naughty baby she
is,” Dicky said. He spoke as if that were the finest tribute that he
could pay his little sister.

“Granny,” Maida said that noon at lunch, “Laura Lathrop came here
and invited me to come to see her this afternoon and I just hate the
thought of going—I don’t know why. Then Dicky came and invited me to
come and see him to-morrow afternoon and I just love the thought of
going. Isn’t it strange?”

“Very,” Granny said, smiling. “But you be sure to be a noice choild
this afternoon, no matter what that wan says to you.”

Granny always referred to Laura as “that wan.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll be good, Granny. Isn’t it funny,” Maida went on. The
tone of her voice showed that she was thinking hard. “Laura makes me
mad—oh, just hopping mad,”—“hopping mad” was one of Rosie’s
expressions—“and yet it seems to me I’d die before I’d let her know
it.”

Laura was waiting for her on the piazza when Maida presented herself
at the Lathrop door. “Won’t you come in and take your things off,
first?” she said. “I thought we’d play in the house for awhile.”

She took Maida immediately upstairs to her bedroom—a large room all