After a while, Rosie taught Maida to jump in the big rope with a half a dozen children at once.  Maida never tired of this.  When she heard the rope swishing through the air, a kind of excitement came over her.  She was proud to think that she had caught the trick—­that something inside would warn her when to jump—­that she could be sure that this warning would not come an instant too soon or too late.  The consciousness of a new strength and a new power made a different child of her.  It made her eyes sparkle like gray diamonds.  It made her cheeks glow like pink peonies.

By this time she could spin tops with the best of them—­sometimes she had five tops going at once.  This was a sport of which the W.M.N.T.’s never tired.  They kept it up long into the twilight.  Sometimes Granny would have to ring the dinner-bell a half a dozen times before Maida appeared.  Maida did not mean to be disobedient.  She simply did not hear the bell.  Granny’s scoldings for this carelessness were very gentle—­Maida’s face was too radiant with her triumph in this new skill.

There was something about Primrose Court—­the rows of trees welded into a yellow arch high over their heads, the sky showing through in diamond-shaped glints of blue, the tiny trim houses and their tinier, trimmer yards, the doves pink-toeing everywhere, their throats bubbling color as wonderful as the old Venetian glass in the Beacon Street house, the children running and shouting, the very smell of the dust which their pattering feet threw up—­something in the look of all this made Maida’s spirits leap.

“I’m happy, happy, HAPPY,” Maida said one day.  The next—­Rosie came rushing into the shop with a frightened face.

“Oh, Maida,” she panted, “a terrible thing has happened.  Laura Lathrop’s got diphtheria—­they say she’s going to die.”

“Oh, Rosie, how dreadful!  Who told you so?”

“Annie the cook told Aunt Theresa.  Dr. Ames went there three times yesterday.  Annie says Mrs. Lathrop looks something awful.”

“The poor, poor woman,” Granny murmured compassionately.

“Oh, I’m so sorry I was cross to Laura,” Maida said, conscience-stricken.  “Oh, I do hope she won’t die.”

“It must be dreadful for Laura,” Rosie continued, “Harold can’t go near her.  Nobody goes into the room but her mother and the nurse.”

The news cast a deep gloom over the Court.  The little children—­Betsy, Molly and Tim played as usual for they could not understand the situation.  But the noisy fun of the older children ceased entirely.  They gathered on the corner and talked in low voices, watching with dread any movement in the Lathrop house.  For a week or more Primrose Court was the quietest spot in the neighborhood.

“They say she’s sinking,” Rosie said that first night.

The thought of it colored Maida’s dreams.

“She’s got through the night all right,” Rosie reported in the morning, her face shining with hope.  “And they think she’s a little better.”  But late the next afternoon, Rosie appeared again, her face dark with dread, “Laura’s worse again.”