“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.

“Please, mum,” he asked humbly, “do you sell fairy-tales here?”

Maida saw at once that it was one of Billy’s games.  She had to bite her lips to keep from laughing.  “Yes,” she said, when she had made her mouth quite firm.  “How much do you want to pay for them?”

“Not more than a penny each, mum,” he replied.

Maida took out of a drawer the pamphlet-tales that Billy had liked so much.

“Are these what you want?” she asked.  But before he could answer, she added in a condescending tone, “Do you know how to read, little boy?”

Billy’s face twitched suddenly and his eyes “skrinkled up.”  Maida saw with a mischievous delight that he, in his turn, was trying to keep the laughter back.

“Yes, mum,” he said, making his face quite serious again.  “My teacher says I’m the best reader in the room.”

He took up the little books and looked them over. “’The Three
Boars’—­no,’Bears,’” he corrected himself. “’Puss-in-Boats’—­no,
‘Boots’; ‘Jack-and-the-Bean-Scalp’—­no,’Stalk’; ’Jack the
Joint-Cooler’—­no, ‘Giant-Killer’; ‘Cinderella,’ ’Bluebird’—­no,
‘Bluebeard’; ’Little Toody-Goo-Shoes’—­no, ‘Little Goody-Two-Shoes’;
‘Tom Thumb,’ ’The Sweeping Beauty,’—­no, ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ ’The
Babes in the Wood.’  I guess I’ll take these ten, mum.”

He felt in all his pockets, one after another.  After a long time, he brought out some pennies, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” he counted slowly.

He took the books, turned and left the shop.  Maida watched him in astonishment.  Was he really going for good?

In a few minutes the little bell tinkled a second time and there stood Billy again.