ed Arthur's baskets and trooped back to the shop. They
lined show case and shelves with the glittering things--boxes, big
and little, gorgeously ornamented with stars and moons, caps of gold
and silver, flying gay plumes, rainbow boats too beautiful to sail
on anything but fairy seas, miniature jackets and trousers that only
a circus rider would wear.

"Dicky, I never did see anything look so lovely," Maida said,
shaking her hands with delight. "I really didn't realize how pretty
they were."

Dicky's big eyes glowed with satisfaction. "Nor me neither," he
confessed.

"And now," Maida said, bubbling over with suppressed importance,
"Rosie's candies--I've saved that until the last." She pulled out one
of the drawers under the show case and lifted it on to the counter.
It was filled with candy-boxes of paper, prettily decorated with
flower patterns on the outside, with fringes of lace paper on the
inside. "I ordered these boxes for you, Rosie," she explained. "I
knew your candy would sell better if it was put up nicely. I thought
the little ones could be five-cent size, the middle-sized ones
ten-cent size, and the big ones twenty-five cent size."

Rosie was dancing up and down with delight. "They're just lovely,
Maida, and how sweet you were to think of it. But it was just like
you."

"Now we must pack them," Maida said.

Four pairs of hands made light work of this. By nine o'clock all the
boxes were filled and spread out temptingly in the show case. By a
quarter past nine, three of the W.M.N.T.'s were in bed trying hard
to get to sleep. But Maida stayed up. The boxes were not her only
surprise.

After the others had gone, she and Granny worked for half an hour in
the little shop.

The Saturday before Christmas dawned clear and fair. Rosie hallooed
for Dicky and Arthur as she came out of doors at half-past seven and
all three arrived at the shop together. Their faces took on such a
comic look of surprise that Maida burst out laughing.

"But where did it all come from?" Rosie asked in bewilderment.
"Maida, you slyboots, you must have done all this after we left."

Maida nodded.

But all Arthur and Dicky said was "Gee!" and "Jiminy crickets!" But
Maida found these exclamatives quite as expressive as Rosie's hugs.
And, indeed, she herself thought the place worthy of any degree of
admiring enthusiasm.

The shop was so strung with garlands of Christmas green that it
looked like a bower. Bunches of mistletoe an