do this
for three years," he said, "and I never could have done it now if it
hadn't been for you, Maida."

Next Dicky took the two little girls where they could buy razors.
"The kind that goes like a lawn-mower," Rosie explained to the
proprietor. The man stared hard before he showed them his stock. But
he was very kind and explained to them exactly how the wonderful
little machine worked.

Maida noticed that Rosie examined very carefully all the things
displayed in windows and on counters. But nothing she saw seemed to
satisfy her, for she did not buy.

"What is it, Rosie?" Maida asked after a while.

"I'm looking for something for my mother."

"I'll help you," Maida said. She took Rosie's hand, and, thus linked
together, the two little girls discussed everything that they saw.

Suddenly, Rosie uttered a little cry of joy and stopped at a
jeweler's window. A tray with the label, "SOLID SILVER, $1,"
overflowed with little heart-shaped pendants.

"Mama'd love one of those," Rosie said. "She just loved things she
could hang round her neck."

They went inside. "It's just what I want," Rosie declared. "But I
wish I had a little silver chain for it. I can't afford one though,"
she concluded wistfully.

"Oh, I know what to do," Maida said. "Buy a piece of narrow black
velvet ribbon. Once my father gave my mother a beautiful diamond
heart. Mother used to wear it on a black velvet ribbon. Afterwards
papa bought her a chain of diamonds. But she always liked the black
velvet best and so did papa and so did I. Papa said it made her neck
look whiter."

The other three children looked curiously at Maida when she said,
"diamond heart." When she said, "string of diamonds," they looked at
each other.

"Was that another of your dreams, Maida?" Rosie asked mischievously.

"Dreams!" Maida repeated, firing up. But before she could say
anything that she would regret, the dimples came. "Perhaps it was a
dream," she said prettily. "But if it was, then everything's a
dream."

"I believe every word that Maida says," Dicky protested stoutly.

"I believe that Maida believes it," Arthur said with a smile.

They all stopped with Rosie while she bought the black velvet ribbon
and strung the heart on it. She packed it neatly away in the glossy
box in which the jeweler had done it up.

"If my mama doesn't come back to wear that heart, nobody else ever
will," she said passionately. "Never--never--never--unless I have a
little gi