Billy’s eyes “skrinkled up.”  “Yes, Mrs. Lathrop,” he admitted, “she lived in the Westabrook family for several years.”

“So I guessed,” Mrs. Lathrop said.  “She’s a very sweet little girl,” she went on earnestly for she had been touched by the sight of Maida’s grief the day that she held Laura to the window.  “I hope Mr. Westabrook’s own little girl is as sweet.”

“She is, Mrs. Lathrop, I assure you she is,” Billy said gravely.

“What is the name of the Westabrook child?”

“Elizabeth Fairfax Westabrook.”

“What is she like?”

“She’s a good deal like Maida,” Billy said, his eyes beginning to “skrinkle up” again.  “They could easily pass for sisters.”

“I suppose that’s why the Westabrooks have been so good to the little Flynn girl,” Mrs. Lathrop went on, “for they certainly are very good to her.  It is quite evident that Maida’s clothes belonged once to the little Westabrook girl.”

“You are quite right, Mrs. Lathrop.  They were made for the little Westabrook girl.”

Mrs. Lathrop always declared afterwards that it was the telephone that really cured Laura.  Certainly, it proved to be the most exciting of toys to the little invalid.  There was always something waiting for her when she waked up in the morning and the tin boxes kept bobbing from window to window until long after dark.  The girls kept her informed of what was going on in the neighborhood and the boys sent her jokes and conundrums and puzzle pictures cut from the newspapers.  Gifts came to her at all hours.  Sometimes it would be a bit of wood-carving—­a grotesque face, perhaps—­that Arthur had done.  Sometimes it was a bit of Dicky’s pretty paper-work.  Rosie sent her specimens of her cooking from candy to hot roasted potatoes, and Maida sent her daily translations of an exciting fairy tale which she was reading in French for the first time.

Pretty soon Laura was well enough to answer the notes herself.  She wrote each of her correspondents a long, grateful and affectionate letter.  By and by, she was able to sit in a chair at the window and watch the games.  The children remembered every few moments to look and wave to her and she always waved back.  At last came the morning when a very thin, pale Laura was wheeled out into the sunshine.  After that she grew well by leaps and bounds.  In a day or two, she could stand in the ring-games with the little children.  By the end of a week, she seemed quite herself.

One morning every child in Primrose Court received a letter in the mail.  It was written on gay-tinted paper with a pretty picture at the top.  It read: 

    “You are cordially invited to a Halloween party to be given by
     Miss Laura Lathrop at 29 Primrose Court on Saturday evening,
     October 31, at a half after seven.”

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But as Maida ceased gradually to worry about Laura, she began to be troubled about Rosie.  For Rosie was not the same child.  Much of the time she was silent, moody and listless.