They went first to a big dry goods store with Dicky.  They helped Dicky to pick out a fur collar for his mother from a counter marked conspicuously $2.98.  The one they selected was of gray and brown fur.  It was Maida’s opinion that it was sable and chinchilla mixed.

Dicky’s face shone with delight when at last he tucked the big round box safely under his arm.  “Just think, I’ve been planning to do this for three years,” he said, “and I never could have done it now if it hadn’t been for you, Maida.”

Next Dicky took the two little girls where they could buy razors.  “The kind that goes like a lawn-mower,” Rosie explained to the proprietor.  The man stared hard before he showed them his stock.  But he was very kind and explained to them exactly how the wonderful little machine worked.

Maida noticed that Rosie examined very carefully all the things displayed in windows and on counters.  But nothing she saw seemed to satisfy her, for she did not buy.

“What is it, Rosie?” Maida asked after a while.

“I’m looking for something for my mother.”

“I’ll help you,” Maida said.  She took Rosie’s hand, and, thus linked together, the two little girls discussed everything that they saw.

Suddenly, Rosie uttered a little cry of joy and stopped at a jeweler’s window.  A tray with the label, “SOLID SILVER, $1,” overflowed with little heart-shaped pendants.

“Mama’d love one of those,” Rosie said.  “She just loved things she could hang round her neck.”

They went inside.  “It’s just what I want,” Rosie declared.  “But I wish I had a little silver chain for it.  I can’t afford one though,” she concluded wistfully.

“Oh, I know what to do,” Maida said.  “Buy a piece of narrow black velvet ribbon.  Once my father gave my mother a beautiful diamond heart.  Mother used to wear it on a black velvet ribbon.  Afterwards papa bought her a chain of diamonds.  But she always liked the black velvet best and so did papa and so did I. Papa said it made her neck look whiter.”

The other three children looked curiously at Maida when she said, “diamond heart.”  When she said, “string of diamonds,” they looked at each other.

“Was that another of your dreams, Maida?” Rosie asked mischievously.

“Dreams!” Maida repeated, firing up.  But before she could say anything that she would regret, the dimples came.  “Perhaps it was a dream,” she said prettily.  “But if it was, then everything’s a dream.”

“I believe every word that Maida says,” Dicky protested stoutly.

“I believe that Maida believes it,” Arthur said with a smile.

They all stopped with Rosie while she bought the black velvet ribbon and strung the heart on it.  She packed it neatly away in the glossy box in which the jeweler had done it up.

“If my mama doesn’t come back to wear that heart, nobody else ever will,” she said passionately.  “Never—­never—­never—­unless I have a little girl of my own some day.”