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A crowd of excited children followed him about, asking him dozens of questions and chattering frantically among themselves. First, he opened one of the bundles—out dropped eight little pulleys. Second, he went up into Maida’s bedroom and fastened one of the little pulleys on the sill outside her window. Third, he did the same thing in Rosie’s house, in Arthur’s and in Dicky’s.
You see Arthur took those things to give away to Dicky because Dicky has such a hard time getting anything he wants.” “Yes, I saw them over at Dicky’s,” Maida said. “And then, there was a great deal more to it that Arthur’s just told me and I thought you ought to know it at once. You see Arthur’s father belongs to a club that meets once a month and Arthur goes there a lot with him.
“Dicky, I never did see anything look so lovely,” Maida said, shaking her hands with delight. “I really didn’t realize how pretty they were.” Dicky’s big eyes glowed with satisfaction. “Nor me neither,” he confessed.
He said that I’d be a cripple for the rest of my life.” In spite of all his efforts, Dicky’s voice broke into a sob. “Oh Dicky, Dicky,” Maida said. Better than anybody else in the world, Maida felt that she could understand, could sympathize. “Oh, Dicky, how sorry I am!” “I can’t bear it,” Dicky said.
With Rosie’s and Dicky’s help, she soon knew everybody by name. She discovered by degrees that on the right side of the court lived the Hales, the Clarks, the Doyles and the Dores; on the left side, the Duncans, the Brines and the Allisons. In the big house at the back lived the Lathrops. Betsy was a great delight to Maida, for the neighborhood brimmed with stories of her mischief.
But at last, she heard Billy’s voice, “On your marks. Get set! Go!” The double-runner stirred. It moved slowly for a moment across the level top of the street. Then came the first slope of the hill—they plunged forward. She heard Rosie’s hysterical shriek, Dicky’s vociferous cheers and Billy’s blood-curdling yells, but she herself was as silent as a little image.
But Granny was old and very easily tired and, so, though her intentions were of the best, she did not make this call. One afternoon, after Thanksgiving, Maida ran over to Dicky’s to borrow some pink tissue paper. She knocked gently. Nobody answered. But from the room came the sound of sobbing. Maida listened. It was Dicky’s voice. At first she did not know what to do.
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.
“Oh, that’s why you buy all that colored paper,” Maida said in a tone of great satisfaction. “I’ve often wondered.” She examined Dicky’s work carefully. She could see that it was done with remarkable precision and skill. “Oh, what fun to do things like that. I do wish you’d show me how to make them, Dicky. I’m such a useless girl. I can’t make a single thing.”
Finally her busy fingers pulled off so much paper that a pair of tiny rubber dolls dropped into her lap. “Say ‘Thank you, Maida,’” Dicky prompted. Delia said something and Dicky assured her that the baby had obeyed him. It sounded like, “Sank-oo-Maysa.” While Delia occupied herself with the dolls, Maida listened to Dicky’s reading lesson. He was getting on beautifully now.
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