“A cent’s worth of dulse, please,” she said airily.

“Dulse?” Maida repeated questioningly; “I guess I haven’t any.  What is dulse?”

“Haven’t any dulse?” Laura repeated with an appearance of being greatly shocked.  “Do you mean to say you haven’t any dulse?”

Maida did not answer—­she put her lips tight together.

“This is a healthy shop,” Laura went on in a sneering tone, “no mollolligobs, no apple-on-the-stick, no tamarinds, no pop-corn balls, no dulse.  Why don’t you sell the things we want?  Half the children in the neighborhood are going down to Main Street to get them now.”

She bustled out of the shop.  Maida stared after her with wide, alarmed eyes.  For a moment she did not stir.  Then she ran into the living-room and buried her face in Granny’s lap, bursting into tears.

“Oh, Granny,” she sobbed, “Laura Lathrop says that half the children don’t like my shop and they’re going down to Main Street to buy things.  What shall I do?  What shall I do?”

“There, there, acushla,” Granny said soothingly, taking the trembling little girl on to her lap.  “Don’t worry about anny t’ing that wan says.  ’Tis a foine little shop you have, as all the grown folks says.”

“But, Granny,” Maida protested passionately, “I don’t want to please the grown people, I want to please the children.  And papa said I must make the store pay.  And now I’m afraid I never will.  Oh, what shall I do?”

She got no further.  A tinkle of the bell, followed by pattering footsteps, interrupted.  In an instant, Rosie, brilliant in her scarlet cape and scarlet hat, with cheeks and lips the color of cherries, stood at her side.

“I saw that hateful Laura come out of here,” she said.  “I just knew she’d come in to make trouble.  What did she say to you?”

Maida told her slowly between her sobs.

“Horrid little smarty-cat!” was Rosie’s comment and she scowled until her face looked like a thunder-cloud.

“I shall never speak to her again,” Maida declared fervently.  “But what shall I do about it, Rosie?—­it may be true what she said.”

“Now don’t you get discouraged, Maida,” Rosie said.  “Because I can tell you just how to get or make those things Laura spoke of.”

“Oh, can you, Rosie.  What would I do without you?  I’ll put everything down in a book so that I shan’t forget them.”

She limped over to the desk.  There the black head bent over the golden one.

“What is dulse?” Maida demanded first.

“Don’t you know what dulse is?” Rosie asked incredulously.  “Maida, you are the queerest child.  The commonest things you don’t know anything about.  And yet I suppose if I asked you if you’d seen a flying-machine, you’d say you had.”

“I have,” Maida answered instantly, “in Paris.”

Rosie’s face wrinkled into its most perplexed look.  She changed the subject at once.  “Well, dulse is a purple stuff—­when you see a lot of it together, it looks as if a million toy-balloons had burst.  It’s all wrinkled up and tastes salty.”