“Oh,” Maida said.  “I understand now.”

“She just hates school,” Dicky went on.  “They can’t make her go.  Old Stoopendale, the truant officer, is always after her.  Little she cares for old Stoopy though.  She gets fierce beatings for it at home, too.  Funny thing about Rosie—­she won’t tell a lie.  And when her mother asks her about it, she always tells the truth.  Sometimes her mother will go to the schoolhouse door with her every morning and afternoon for a week.  But the moment she stops, Rosie begins to hook jack again.”

“Mercy me!” Maida said.  In all her short life she had never heard anything like this.  She was convinced that Rosie Brine was a very naughty little girl.  And yet, underneath this conviction, burned an ardent admiration for her.

“She must be very brave,” she said soberly.

“Brave!  Well, I guess you’d think so!  Arthur Duncan says she’s braver than a lot of boys he knows.  Arthur and she hook jack together sometimes.  And, oh cracky, don’t they have the good times!  They go down to the Navy Yard and over to the Monument Grounds.  Sometimes they go over to Boston Common and the Public Garden.  Once they walked all the way to Franklin Park.  And in the summer they often walk down to Crescent Beach.  They say when I get well, I can go with them.”

Dicky spoke in the wistful tone with which he always related the deeds of stronger children.  Maida knew exactly how he felt—­she had been torn by the same hopes and despairs.

“Oh, wouldn’t it be grand to be able to do just anything?” she said.  “I’m just beginning to feel as if I could do some of the things I’ve always wanted to do.”

“I’m going to do them all, sometime,” Dicky prophesied.  “Doc O’Brien says so.”

“I think Rosie the beautifullest little girl,” Maida said.  “I wish she’d come into the shop so that I could get acquainted with her.”

“Oh, she’ll come in sometime.  You see the W.M.N.T. is meeting now and we’re all pretty busy.  She’s the only girl in it.”

“The W.M.N.T.,” Maida repeated.  “What does that mean?”

“I can’t tell?” Dicky said regretfully.  “It’s the name of our club.  Rosie and Arthur and I are the only ones who belong.”

After that talk, Maida watched Rosie Brine closer than ever.  If she caught a glimpse of the scarlet cape in the distance, it was hard to go on working.  She noticed that Rosie seemed very fond of all helpless things.  She was always wheeling out the babies in the neighborhood, always feeding the doves and carrying her kitten about on her shoulder, always winning the hearts of other people’s dogs and then trying to induce them not to follow her.

“It seems strange that she never comes into the shop,” Maida said mournfully to Dicky one day.

“You see she never has any money to spend,” Dicky explained.  “That’s the way her mother punishes her.  But sometimes she earns it on the sly taking care of babies.  She loves babies and babies always love her.  Delia’ll go to her from my mother any time and as for Betsy Hale—­Rosie’s the only one who can do anything with her.”