Betsy was a great delight to Maida, for the neighborhood brimmed with stories of her mischief.  She had buried her best doll in the ash-barrel, thrown her mother’s pocketbook down the cesspool, put all the clean laundry into a tub of water and painted the parlor fireplace with tomato catsup.  In a single afternoon, having become secretly possessed of a pair of scissors, she cut all the fringe off the parlor furniture, cut great scallops in the parlor curtains, cut great patches of fur off the cat’s back.  When her mother found her, she was busy cutting her own hair.

Often Granny would hear the door slam on Maida’s hurried rush from the shop.  Hobbling to the window, she would see the child leading Betsy by the hand.  “Running away again,” was all Maida would say.  Occasionally Maida would call in a vexed tone, “Now how did she creep past the window without my seeing her?” And outside would be rosy-cheeked, brass-buttoned Mr. Flanagan, carrying Betsy home.  Once Billy arrived at the shop, bearing Betsy in his arms.  “She was almost to the bridge,” he said, “when I caught sight of her from the car window.  The little tramp!”

Betsy never seemed to mind being caught.  For an instant the little rosebud that was her mouth would part over the tiny pearls that were her teeth.  This roguish smile seemed to say:  “You wait until the next time.  You won’t catch me then.”

Sometimes Betsy would come into the shop for an hour’s play.  Maida loved to have her there but it was like entertaining a whirlwind.  Betsy had a strong curiosity to see what the drawers and boxes contained.  Everything had to be put back in its place when she left.

Next to the Hales lived the Clarks.  By the end of the first week Maida was the chief adoration of the Clark twins.  Dorothy and Mabel were just as good as Betsy was naughty.  When they came over to see Maida, they played quietly with whatever she chose to give them.  It was an hour, ordinarily, before they could be made to talk above a whisper.  If they saw Maida coming into the court, they would run to her side, slipping a hot little hand into each of hers.  Attended always by this roly-poly bodyguard, Maida would limp from group to group of the playing children.  Nobody in Primrose Court could tell the Clark twins apart.  Maida soon learned the difference although she could never explain it to anybody else.  “It’s something you have to feel,” she said.

Billy Potter enjoyed the twins as much as Maida did.  “Good morning, Dorothy-Mabel,” he always said when he met one of them; “is this you or your sister?” And he always answered their whispered remarks with whispers so much softer than theirs that he finally succeeded in forcing them to raise their shy little voices.

The Doyles and the Dores lived in one house next to the Clarks, Molly and Tim on the first floor, Dicky and Delia above.  Maida became very fond of the Doyle children.  Like Betsy, they were too young to go to school and she saw a good deal of them in the lonely school hours.  The puddle was an endless source of amusement to them.  As long as it remained, they entertained themselves playing along its shores.