again.

"Hello, Tim," Billy Potter would say whenever they met. "Fallen into
a pud-muddle lately?"

The word _pud-muddle_ always sent Tim off into peals of laughter. It
was the only thing Maida had discovered that could make him laugh,
for he was as serious as Molly was merry. Molly certainly was the
jolliest little girl in the court--Maida had never seen her with
anything but a smiling face.

Dicky's mother went to work so early and came back so late that
Maida had never seen her. But Dicky soon became an intimate. Maida
had begun the reading lessons and Dicky was so eager to get on that
they were progressing famously.

The Lathrops lived in the big house at the back of the court. Granny
learned from the Misses Allison that, formerly, the whole
neighborhood had belonged to the Lathrop family. But they had sold
all their land, piece by piece, except the one big lot on which the
house stood. Perhaps it was because they had once been so important
that Mrs. Lathrop seemed to feel herself a little better than the
rest of the people in Primrose Court. 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. Harold
seemed to do nothing all day long but ride a wheel at a tearing pace
over the asphalt paths, and regularly, for two hours every morning,
to draw a shrieking bow across a tortured violin.

The more Maida watched Laura the less she liked her. She could see
that what Rosie said was perfectly true--Laura put on airs. Every
afternoon Laura played on the lawn. Her appearance was the signal
for all the small fry of the neighborhood to gather about the gate.
First would come the Doyles, then Betsy, then, one by one, the
strange children who wandered into the court, until there would be a
row of wistful little faces stuck between the bars of the fence.
They would follow every move that Laura made as she played with the
toys spread in profusion upon the grass.

Laura often pretended no