Inez Haynes Irwin

Maida's Little Shop Inez Haynes Irwin

Four people sat in the big, shining automobile. Three of them were men. The fourth was a little girl. The little girl's name was Maida Westabrook. The three men were "Buffalo" Westabrook, her father, Dr. Pierce, her physician, and Billy Potter, her friend. They were coming from Marblehead to Boston. Maida sat in one corner of the back seat gazing dreamily out at the whirling country. She found it very beautiful and very curious. They were going so fast that all the reds and greens and yellows of the autumn trees melted into one variegated band. A moment later they came out on the ocean. And now on the water side were two other streaks of color, one a spongy blue that was sky, another a clear shining blue that was sea. Maida half-shut her eyes and the whole world seemed to flash by in ribbons. "May I get out for a moment, papa?" she asked suddenly in a thin little voice. "I'd like to watch the waves." "All right," her father answered briskly. To the chauffeur he said, "Stop here, Henri." To Maida, "Stay as long as you want, Posie." "Posie" was Mr. Westabrook's pet-name for Maida. Billy Potter jumped out and helped Maida to the ground. The three men watched her limp to the sea-wall. She was a child whom you would have noticed anywhere because of her luminous, strangely-quiet, gray eyes and because of the ethereal look given to her face by a floating mass of hair, pale-gold and tendrilly. And yet I think you would have known that she was a sick little girl at the first glance. When she moved, it was with a great slowness as if everything tired her. She was so thin that her hands were like claws and her cheeks scooped in instead of out. She was pale, too, and somehow her eyes looked too big.