The two bedrooms were very simple, all white--woodwork, furniture,
beds, even the fur rugs on the floor. But they were wonderfully gay
from the beautiful paper that Billy had selected. In Granny's room,
the walls imitated a flowered chintz. But in Maida's room every
panel was different. And they all helped to tell the same happy
story of a day's hunting in the time when men wore long feathered
hats on their curls, when ladies dressed like pictures and all
carried falcons on their wrists.

"Granny, Granny," Maida called down to them, "Did you ever see any
place in all your life that felt so _homey_?"

"I guess it will do," Billy said in an undertone.

That night, for the first time, Maida slept in the room over the
little shop.

CHAPTER III: THE FIRST DAY

If you had gone into the little shop the next day, you would have
seen a very pretty picture.

First of all, I think you would have noticed the little girl who sat
behind the counter--a little girl in a simple blue-serge dress and a
fresh white "tire"--a little girl with shining excited eyes and
masses of pale-gold hair, clinging in tendrilly rings about a thin,
heart-shaped face--a little girl who kept saying as she turned round
and round in her swivel-chair:

"Oh, Granny, do you think _anybody's_ going to buy _anything_
to-day?"

Next I think you would have noticed an old woman who kept coming to
the living-room door--an old woman in a black gown and a white apron
so stiffly starched that it rattled when it touched anything--an old
woman with twinkling blue eyes and hair, enclosing, as in a silver
frame, a little carved nut of a face--an old woman who kept soothing
the little girl with a cheery:

"Now joost you be patient, my lamb, sure somebody'll be here soon."

The shop was unchanged since yesterday, except for a big bowl of
asters, red, white and blue.

"Three cheers for the red, white and blue," Maida sang when she
arranged them. She had been singing at intervals ever since.
Suddenly the latch slipped. The bell rang.

Maida jumped. Then she sat so still in her high chair that you would
have thought she had turned to stone. But her eyes, glued to the
moving door, had a look as if she did not know what to expect.

The door swung wide. A young man entered. It was Billy Potter.

He walked over to the show case, his hat in his hand. And all the
time he looked Maida straight in the eye. But you would have thought
he