“What do you think’s happened, Maida?” Rosie asked.

“I don’t know.  Oh, what?” Maida asked affrighted.

“When I came home from school this noon mother wasn’t there.  But Aunt Theresa was there—­she’d cooked the dinner.  She said that mother had gone away for a visit and that she wouldn’t be back for some time.  She said she was going to keep house for father and me while mother was gone.  I feel dreadfully homesick and lonesome without mother.”

“Oh Rosie, I am sorry,” Maida said.  “But perhaps your mother won’t stay long.  Do you like your Aunt Theresa?”

“Oh, yes, I like her.  But of course she isn’t mother.”

“No, of course.  Nobody is like your mother.”

“Oh, yes; there’s something else I had to tell you.  The W.M.N.T.’s are going to meet at Dicky’s after school this afternoon.  Be sure to come, Maida.”

“Of course I’ll come.”  Maida’s whole face sparkled.  “That is, if Granny doesn’t think it’s too wet.”

Rosie lingered for a few moments but she did not seem like her usual happy-go-lucky self.  And when she left, Maida noticed that instead of running across the street she actually walked.

All the morning long Maida talked of nothing to Granny but the prospective meeting of the W.M.N.T.’s.  “Just think, Granny, I never belonged to a club before,” she said again and again.

Very early she had put out on her bed the clothes that she intended to wear—­a tanbrown serge of which she was particularly fond, and her favorite “tire” of a delicate, soft lawn.  She kept rushing to the window to study the sky.  It continued to look like the inside of a dull tin cup.  She would not have eaten any lunch at all if Granny had not told her that she must.  And her heart sank steadily all the afternoon for the rain continued to come down.

“I don’t suppose I can go, Granny,” she faltered when the clock struck four.

“Sure an you can,” Granny responded briskly.

But she wrapped Maida up, as Maida herself said:  “As if I was one of papa’s carved crystals come all the way from China.”

First Granny put on a sweater, then a coat, then over all a raincoat.  She put a hood on her head and a veil over that.  She made her wear rubber boots and take an umbrella.  Maida got into a gale of laughter during the dressing.

“I ought to be wrapped in excelsior now,” she said.  “If I fall down in the puddle in the court, Granny,” she threatened merrily, “I never can pick myself up.  I’ll either have to roll and roll and roll until I get on to dry land or I’ll have to wait until somebody comes and shovels me out.”

But she did not fall into the puddle.  She walked carefully along the edge and then ran as swiftly as her clothes and lameness would permit.  She arrived in Dicky’s garret, red-cheeked and breathless.

Arthur and Rosie had already come.  Rosie was playing on the floor with Delia and the puppy that she had rescued from the tin-can persecution.  Rosie was growling, the dog was yelping and Delia was squealing—­but all three with delight.