nder the scarlet cape. It seemed to Maida that
she worked like lightning, for she made batch after batch of candy,
moving as capably about the stove as an experienced cook. In the
meantime, Maida was popping corn at the fireplace. They mounted
fifty apples on skewers and dipped them, one at a time, into the
boiling candy. They made thirty corn-balls and twenty-five
mollolligobs, which turned out to be round chunks of candy, stuck on
the end of sticks.

"I never did see such clever children anywhere as there are in
Primrose Court," Maida said that night with a sigh to Granny. "Rosie
told me that she could make six kinds of candy. And Dicky can cook
as well as his mother. They make me feel so useless. Why, Granny, I
can't do a single thing that's any good to anybody."

The next day the shop was crowded. By night there was not an apple,
a corn-ball or a mollolligob left.

"I shall have a sale like this once a week in the future," Maida
said. "Why, Granny, lots and lots of children came here who'd never
been in the shop before."

And so what looked like serious trouble ended very happily.

Trouble number three was a great deal more serious and it did not,
at first, promise to end well at all. It had to do with Arthur
Duncan. It had been going on for a week before Maida mentioned it to
anybody. But it haunted her very dreams.

Early Monday morning, Arthur came into the shop. In his usual gruff
voice and with his usual surly manner, he said, "Show me some of
those rubbers in the window."

Maida took out a handful of the rubbers--five, she thought--and put
them on the counter. While Arthur looked them over, she turned to
replace a paper-doll which she had knocked down.

"Guess I won't take one to-day," Arthur said, while her back was
still turned, and walked out.

When Maida put the rubbers back, she discovered that there were only
four. She made up her mind that she had not counted right and
thought no more of the incident.

Two days later, Arthur Duncan came in again. Maida had just been
selling some pencils--pretty striped ones with a blue stone in the
end. Three of them were left lying out on the counter. Arthur asked
her to show him some penholders. Maida took three from the shelves
back of her. He bought one of these. After he had gone, she
discovered that there were only two pencils left on the counter.

"One of them must have rolled off," Maida thought. But although she
looked everywhere, she could not f