The W.M.N.T.’s wasted no time that last week in spite of a very enticing snowstorm.  Maida, of course, had nothing to do on her own account, but she worked with Dicky, morning and afternoon.

Rosie could not make candy until the last two or three days for fear it would get stale.  Then she set to like a little whirlwind.

“My face is almost tanned from bending over the stove,” she said to Maida; “Aunt Theresa says if I cook another batch of candy, I’ll have a crop of freckles.”

Arthur seemed to work the hardest of all because his work was so much more difficult.  It took a great deal of time and strength and yet nobody could help him in it.  The sound of his hammering came into Maida’s room early in the morning.  It came in sometimes late at night when, cuddling between her blankets, she thought what a happy girl she was.

“I niver saw such foine, busy little folks,” Granny said approvingly again and again.  “It moinds me av me own Annie.  Niver a moment but that lass was working at some t’ing.  Oh, I wonder what she’s doun’ and finking this Christmas.”

“Don’t you worry,” Maida always said.  “Billy’ll find her for you yet—­he said he would.”

Maida, herself, was giving, for the first time in her experience, a good deal of thought to Christmas time.

In the first place, she had sent the following invitation to every child in Primrose Court: 

“Will you please come to my Christmas Tree to be given Christmas Night in the ‘Little Shop.’  Maida.”

In the second place, she was spying on all her friends, listening to their talk, watching them closely in work and play to find just the right thing to give them.

“Do you know, I never made a Christmas present in my life,” she said one day to Rosie.

“You never made a Christmas present?” Rosie repeated.

Maida’s quick perception sensed in Rosie’s face an unspoken accusation of selfishness.

“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, Rosie dear,” Maida hastened to explain.  “It was because I was too sick.  You see, I was always in bed.  I was too weak to make anything and I could not go out and buy presents as other children did.  But people used to give me the loveliest things.”

“What did they give you?” Rosie asked curiously.

“Oh, all kinds of things.  Father’s given me an automobile and a pair of Shetland ponies and a family of twenty dolls and my weight in silver dollars.  I can’t remember half the things I’ve had.”

“A pair of Shetland ponies, an automobile, a family of twenty dolls, your weight in silver dollars,” Rosie repeated after her.  “Why, Maida, you’re dreaming or you’re out of your head.”

“Out of my head!  Why, Rosie you’re out of your head.  Don’t you suppose I know what I got for Christmas?” Maida’s eyes began to flash and her lips to tremble.

“Well, now, Maida, just think of it,” Rosie said in her most reasonable voice.  “Here you are a little girl just like anybody else only you’re running a shop.  Now just as if you could afford to have an automobile!  Why, my father knows a man who knows another man who bought an automobile and it cost nine hundred dollars.  What did yours cost?”