Maidan

“ Maida said, “you dear, darling, old fairy-dame!” She was so excited that she wriggled like a little eel all the time Granny was bundling her into her clothes. And when she reached the street, it seemed as if she must explode.
A big moon, floating like a silver balloon in the sky, made the night like day. The neighborhood sizzled with excitement for the street and sidewalks were covered with children dragging sleds.
“It’s like the ‘Pied Piper’, Rosie,” Maida said joyfully, “children everywhere and all going in the same direction.” ”

“ Maida replied, “and always have some one near the telephone if anybody calls up. And remember, if the baby doesn’t seem all right, telephone for the doctor at once. Get the hospital on the telephone at nine o’clock and ask how Mrs. Dore is this morning.” Then mounting her machine in a flash, Maida was off like a bird.
“Who would ever have thought,” Rosie said looking after her, “that the Maida Westabrook who first came to Primrose Court—so pale and thin and lame—would ever grow into such a strong girl? Do you remember, Laura?” ”

“ Maida laughed. “Now isn’t it strange I have always thought that you look like somebody in a fairy tale, too. You’re like Rose-Red in ‘Rose-Red and Snow-White.’ I think,” she added, flushing, for she was a little afraid that it was not polite to say things like this, “that you are the beautifulest girl I ever saw.”
“Why, that’s just what I think of you,” Rosie said in surprise.
“I just love black hair,” Maida said.
“And I just adore golden hair,” Rosie said. “Now, isn’t that strange?”
“I guess,” Maida announced after a moment of thought, “people like what they haven’t got.” ”

“ Maidwa's pack for traveling was now ready, and he was taking his farewell smoke, when the young magician thus addressed him:
"My friend Maidwa, you know for what cause you came thus far, and why you have risked so much and waited so long. You have proved my friend indeed. You have accomplished your object, and your noble perseverance shall not go unrewarded. If you undertake other things with the same spirit, you will always succeed. My destiny compels me to remain where I am, although I should feel happy to be allowed to go with you. ”

“ Often after dinner, the W.M.N.T.’s would call in a body on Maida. Then would follow long hours of such fun that Maida hated to hear the clock strike nine. Always there would be molasses-candy making by the capable Rosie at the kitchen stove and corn-popping by the vigorous Arthur on the living-room hearth. After the candy had cooled and the pop corn had been flooded in melted butter, they would gather about the hearth to roast apples and chestnuts and to listen to the fairy-tales that Maida would read. ”

“ After a while, Rosie taught Maida to jump in the big rope with a half a dozen children at once. Maida never tired of this. When [Pg 205] she heard the rope swishing through the air, a kind of excitement came over her. She was proud to think that she had caught the trick—that something inside would warn her when to jump—that she could be sure that this warning would not come an instant too soon or too late. The consciousness of a new strength and a new power made a different child of her. It made her eyes sparkle like gray diamonds. It made her cheeks glow like pink peonies. ”

“ For one astounded instant nobody could speak.
“Oh Maida!” at last Rosie breathed. The two girls threw themselves upon her; Arthur rose and then suddenly sat down again but Dicky kept quite still his eyes full of stars. “I knew you’d have some plan, Maida,” he said. Harold, unexpectedly, turned a somersault.
“I know I’m dreaming,” Laura almost whispered.
The horn stopped. A great gray car turned into Primrose Court. A man, middle-aged, tall, massive and with a pronounced stoop to his shoulders, stepped out. He turned a head, big and shaggy as a buffalo, in the direction of Maida’s Little Shop. ”

“ Maida remained motionless: but the watching mehari uttered a snarl. The girl sprang to her feet, not knowing what to do. A cloaked figure which had slipped in attempted to hide behind the open door, but was too late. Maida saw the gliding shadow, shrieked, and would have run into the corridor, but the man in the Arab cloak caught her on the threshold, and muffled her head in his mantle. She struggled in his grasp, and almost escaped. Chairs were overturned: the rug under the table was twisted round the man's feet: I thought that he would trip and fall, but he saved himself. ”

“ Maida announced at breakfast a week later, “we’ve had all the vacation we’re going to get—at least all that the Big Six get. To-morrow begins our work. Father said we could plan it ourselves how it was to be done and unless our plans were bad ones, we could keep right on with them. Now I propose that, right after breakfast, you boys go to the barn and make a program of your work. We girls will stay here and make a program for ourselves. You remember what it is you’re expected to do?” ”

“ Maidwa gave them his whole story. When he came to those parts which related to the Red Swan, they turned and looked upon her in wonder and admiration, for she was very beautiful.
The chief then informed Maidwa that his brothers had been to their town in search of him, but that they had gone back some time before, having given up all hopes of ever seeing him again.
"But you are a man of spirit," the chief continued, "whom fortune is pleased to befriend. Take my daughter with you and treat her well. So shall we be more closely bound together." ”

“ This passage I never read; but, when Maitland told me of it, it struck me greatly and remained in my mind. These influences are one of the great uses of literary companionship among men of letters. As Henry Maitland used to say: "We come together and strike out sparks."
As I went north by train from St. Pée d'Ascain to Bordeaux, passing ancient Dax and all the sombre silences of the wounded serried rows of pines which have made an infertile soil yield something to commerce, Maitland's spirit, his wounded and often sickly spirit, was with me. ”

“ Dicky was fast changing to the color of a coffee bean and Arthur threatened to become pitch-black. As for the Little Six, Maida said they were “just colonies of freckles”; and colonies in which layer had grown on layer.
“I can’t believe you are the same children I saw in the city a little over two weeks ago,” Buffalo Westabrook remarked on his second visit. “First I was afraid you were working too hard. When Maida sent me the program of your work, it looked to me as if you were undertaking altogether too much, but you certainly thrive on it.”
“Well we play more than we work,” Rosie explained. ”

“ He will question you much as to your dreams and the strength of your guardian spirits. If he is satisfied with your answers, he will urge you to attempt the recovery of his scalp. He will show you the course to take, and if you feel inclined, as I see that you shall, go forward, my son, with a strong heart; persevere, and I have a presentiment that you will succeed."
Maidwa answered, "I will try."
Betimes in the morning he set off on his journey, after having eaten from the magic kettle, which sang a sort of farewell chant on its way from the fireplace to its station in the corner. ”

“ Strange it was and yet it had a familiar ring; the strangeness was its weakness and its breathlessness.
“I am Maida Westabrook.”
“Listen! I must talk quick. They will be [Pg 225] back and stop me. I am Silva Burle. They think I am asleep. I have tried to tell them. They won’t listen. They think I am raving. I’m not. I’ve got my senses. My baby sister, Nesta, is in a cave on the other side of the lake. Tyma is away. There’s nobody to feed her. She’ll starve—”
“I found her this afternoon, Silva,” Maida interrupted. “She’s upstairs in the Little House now—fast asleep.” ”

“ But she wrapped Maida up, as Maida herself said: “As if I was one of papa’s carved crystals come all the way from China.”
First Granny put on a sweater, then a coat, then over all a raincoat. She put a hood on her head and a veil over that. She made her wear rubber boots and take an umbrella. Maida got into a gale of laughter during the dressing.
“I ought to be wrapped in excelsior now,” she said. “If I fall down in the puddle in the court, Granny,” she threatened merrily, “I never can pick myself up. ”

“ I wondered whether I should wake Maida, and get her to go with me, but somehow I wasn't in the mood for Maida. I was afraid that, being in a monastery, she would be thinking of her precious Sisterhood and wanting to hurry back as fast as she could. She does mean to join when her year is up, I know, which is so silly of her, when the world's such a nice place ”

“ Return immediately to your tribe, for under pretence of recovering one of the magic arrows which belong to you by your father's dying wish, your brothers have sent you off so that they may become possessed of your beautiful wife, the Red Swan. Speed home! You will find the magic arrow at the lodge-door. You will live to a very old age, and die happily. You can go no farther in these abodes of ours."
Maidwa looked, as he thought, to the west, and saw a bright light as if the sun was shining in its splendor, but he saw no sun. ”

“ Maitland knew, and none knew better, that in a triumphant passage there is triumphant rhythm, and in a passage full of mourning or melancholy the accompanying and native rhythm is both melancholy and mournful. How many times, too, I have heard him quote, again from Landor, "Many flowers must perish ere a grain of corn be ripened."
All this time the wife was I know not where, nor did I trouble much to inquire. Miss Kingdon and Miss Greathead looked after her very patiently, and did good work for their friend Maitland, as he well knew. ”

“ Perhaps no girl as lovely as Maida ever thought less of her own charm. She believed that the one interest which had held her to the world and given her strength to resist the Head Sister's persuasions was a false star. It came into her mind that the best way to forget would be to promise, as her friend the grey lady had begged her to do, that she would become a life member of the Sisterhood. ”

“ As a [pg 53] result his people had become the most skilled and industrious in the land, excelling in the production of rice, silk, lacquer rugs, matting, bronzes, pottery, steel, and implements of husbandry and articles for ornamentation.
Therefore Maido was one of the most powerful as he was resourceful of the shogun’s daimyos and had wisely looked askance at the petty quarrels and fierce rebellions that were constantly devastating other parts of the country and robbing them of their treasure. ”

“ When the second bell rang, the boys came in from the barn and the twelve children, Granny Flynn at one end of the table and Mrs. Dore at the other, sat down to a breakfast of fruit, oatmeal, eggs, and all the milk they wanted.
After breakfast, Maida said, “Now, first, I want to show the six little children where’s the nicest place for them to play. Do the rest of you want to come?”
The rest did want to come. Perhaps Laura voiced their sentiments when she said, “That’s a great idea, Maida. Get the little children interested, so they won’t be forever tagging us.” ”

“ Maida assured him. “The Lang Fairy Books and Grimm and Andersen, George McDonald and Louisa M. Alcott and Howard Pyle and Stevenson and Kipling, and all the nicest books that father and Billy Potter and Dr. Pierce and I could think of. And lots more that they selected that I had never heard of.”
From the library, they went out doors through the little vine-covered vestibule.
From upstairs came the voice of Granny Flynn and Mrs. Dore putting the younger children to bed.
“We three girls,” Maida explained, “have rooms at the front of the house on the second floor. ”

“ At any rate, although she spoke with all, the Misses Allison were the only ones on whom she condescended to call. Maida caught a glimpse of her occasionally on the piazza—a tall, thin woman, white-haired and sharp-featured, who always wore a worsted shawl.
The house was a big, bulky building, a mass of piazzas and bay-windows, with a hexagonal cupola on the top. It was painted white with green blinds and trimmed with a great deal of wooden lace. The wide lawn was well-kept and plots of flowers, here and there, gave it a gay air.
Laura had a brother named Harold, who was short and fat. ”

“ She jumped to her feet, still clutching her flowers, raced across the Moraine into the path. She had not gone very far before something stopped her; not an obstacle but a thought. She had expected, remembering the day of the picnic, that the voice would be joined by two others. This did not happen. That first voice maintained its eerie call. The thought was, “That cry is not the cry of anything frightening [Pg 202] like a goblin or a wild animal, or a tramp—it is the wail of a baby.”
Maida stood for a moment just where she had stopped. The cry began again. Terror surged through Maida. ”

“ Dicky breathed.
“Are we going to live there?” Rosie asked in an awed tone.
“Oh mercy no!” Maida answered. “That’s father’s house—the Big House. Our house is ever so much nicer.”
“I hope it isn’t any bigger,” Laura said, her voice a little awed too.
Maida laughed a little. “No it’s not quite as big as that,” she admitted.
“Shall I go on, Miss Maida?” Botkins asked.
“Yes, please Botkins,” Maida answered. And they continued to go on through more winding, geometrically perfect, beautifully-kept, gray roads; past armies and armies of trees: high, plumy-tipped, feathery-trunked aristocratic elms ”