"
"Very well." Emily was not unsympathetic, but she had had a rather
wearing life. Her love of toys and of little children had kept her
human, otherwise she had a feeling that she might have hardened into
chill spinsterhood.
As Jean disappeared through the door, the elder woman moved about the
shop, setting it in order for the night. It was a labor of love to put
the dolls to bed, to lock the glass doors safely on the puffy rabbits
and woolly dogs and round-eyed cats, to close the drawers on the
tea-sets and Lilliputian kitchens, to shut into boxes the tin soldiers
that their queer old customer had craved.
For more than a decade Emily Bridges had kept the shop. Originally it
had been a Thread and Needle Shop, supplying people who did not care to
go downtown for such wares.
Then one Christmas she had put in a few things to attract the children.
The children had come, and gradually there had been more toys--until at
last she had found herself the owner of a Toy Shop, with the thread and
needle and other staid articles stuck negligently in the background.
Yet in the last three years it had been hard to keep up the standard
which she had set for herself.
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