28 Books -- Day 14

Maida's Little Shop by Inez Haynes Gillmore (1909)

 

"Opposite the school was a big, wide court. Shaded with beautiful trees—maples beginning to flame, horse-chestnuts a little browned, it was lined with wooden toy houses, set back of fenced-in yards and veiled by climbing vines. Pigeons were flying about, alighting now and then to peck at the ground or to preen their green and purple necks. Boys were spinning tops. Girls were jumping rope. The dust they kicked up had a sweet, earthy smell in Maida’s nostrils. As she stared, charmed with the picture, a little girl in a scarlet cape and a scarlet hat came climbing up over one of the fences. Quick, active as a squirrel, she disappeared into the next yard.

“Primrose Court!” Dr. Pierce exclaimed. “Well, well, well!” 

“Primrose Court,” Maida repeated. “Do primroses grow there?”

 “Bless your heart, no,” Dr. Pierce laughed; “it was named after a man called Primrose who used to own a great deal of the neighborhood.”

 But Maida was scarcely listening. “Oh, what a cunning little shop!” she exclaimed. “There, opposite the court. What a perfectly darling little place!”

 “Good Lord! that’s Connors’,” Dr. Pierce explained. “Many a reckless penny I’ve squandered there, my dear. Connors was the funniest, old, bent, dried-up man. I wonder who keeps it now.”" (page 21)

 

Happy Valentine's Day!! I've been saving this series for a day of love. These books are rather like that heart shaped box of candy I've been nibbling on today. Each one different, but still in some way the same.

 

The first book introduces us to Maida, the daughter of rich businessman Jerome "Buffalo" Westabrook. Maida is getting over a long illness. She has just returned to America after being treated in Europe by a famous German physician. On the way to her father's Boston home, father and daughter are accompanied in their touring car by her family physician Doctor Pierce, and Billy Potter, a newspaperman who is a friend of her father's. They take a detour to visit the neighborhood where Doctor Pierce grew up, a small, mostly lower income suburb called Primrose Court. The corner shop catches Maida's eye and she is delighted to find they sell pickled limes.

 

While not sick any more, Maida is not fully well either, and needs something to occupy her mind as she recouperates. With a nod to hidden identities and other fairy tales, Maida's father buys that little corner shop, and installs Maida and her elderly Irish nurse Granny Flynn, to run it.

 

The shop, newly christened "Maida's Little Shop", is near a small schoolhouse, and she gets to know the children of the neighborhood. Arthur, Rosie, brother and sister Laura and Harold, and Dickie are the older children. The twins, Dorothy and Mable, brother and sister Mollie and Timmie, Betsy, and Dickie's baby sister Delia are the younger children.

 

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