Granny took her turn after Billy.  She hopped about like a very active and a very benevolent old fairy.

“Oh, doesn’t she look like the Dame in fairy tales?” Maida said.

They played for a half an hour.  And who do you suppose won?  Not Maida with all her new-found strength, not Rosie with all her nervous energy, not Billy with all his athletic training.

“Mrs. Delia Flynn, champion of America and Ireland,” Billy greeted the victor.  “Granny, we’ll have to enter you in the next Olympic games.”

They returned after this breathless work to the living-room.

“Now I’m going to tell you a story,” Billy announced.

“Oh!  Oh!  Oh!” Maida squealed.  “Do!  Billy tells the most wonderful stories, Rosie—­stories he’s heard and stories he’s read.  But the most wonderful ones are those that he makes up as he goes along.”

The two little girls settled themselves on the hearth-rug at Billy’s feet.  Granny sat, not far off, working with double speed at her neglected knitting.

“Once upon a time,” Billy said, “there lived a little girl named Klara.  And Klara was the naughtiest little girl in the world.  She was a pretty child and a clever child and everybody would have loved her if she had only given them a chance.  But how can you love a child who is doing naughty things all the time?  Particularly was she a great trial to her mother.  That poor lady was not well and needed care and attention, herself.  But instead of giving her these, Klara gave her only hard words and disobedient acts.  The mother used sometimes to punish her little daughter but it seemed as if this only made her worse.  Both father and mother were in despair about her.  Klara seemed to be growing steadily worse and worse.  And, indeed, lately, she had added to her naughtiness by threatening to run away.

“One night, it happened, Klara had been so bad that her mother had put her to bed early.  The moment her mother left the room, Klara whipped over to the window.  ’I’m going to dress myself and climb out the window and run away and never come back, she said to herself.’

“The house in which Klara lived was built on the side of a cliff, overlooking the sea.  As Klara stood there in her nightgown the moon began to rise and come up out of the water.  Now the moonrise is always a beautiful sight and Klara stopped for a moment to watch it, fascinated.

“It seemed to her that she had never seen the moon look so big before.  And certainly she had never seen it such a color—­a soft deep orange.  In fact, it might have been an immense orange—­or better, a monster pumpkin stuck on the horizon-line.