The Tin Soldier. Temple Bailey
Forge?"
Hilda evaded that. "Anyhow, I'm glad they've stopped playing the 'Star-Spangled Banner' at the movies. I'm tired of standing up."
Jean voiced her scorn. "I'd stand until I dropped, rather than miss a note of it."
Doctor McKenzie interposed:
"'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things,
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—'"
"Oh, Daddy," Jean reproached him, "I should think you might be serious."
"I am not just twenty—and I have learned to bank my fires. And you mustn't take Hilda too literally. She doesn't mean all that she says, do you, Hilda?"
He patted Miss Merritt on the shoulder as he went out. Jean hated that. And Hilda's blush.
With the Doctor gone, Hilda shut herself up in the office to balance her books.
Jean went on with her knitting, Hilda did not knit. When she was not helping in the office or in the house, her hands lay idle in her lap.
Jean's mind, as she worked, was on those long white hands of Hilda's. Her own hands had short fingers like her father's. Her mother's hands had been slender and transparent. Hilda's hands were not slender, they had breadth as well as length, and the skin was thick. Even the whiteness was like the flesh of a fish, pale and flabby. No, there was no beauty at all in Hilda's hands.
Once Jean had criticised them to her father. "I think they are ugly."
"They are useful hands, and they have often helped me."
"I like Emily's hands much better."
"Oh, you and your Emily," he had teased.
Yet Jean's words came back to the Doctor the next night, as he sat in the Toy Shop waiting to escort his daughter home.
Miss Emily was serving a customer, a small boy in a red coat and baggy trousers. A nurse stood behind the small boy, and played, as it were, Chorus. She wore a blue cape and a long blue bow on the back of her hat.
The small boy was having the mechanical toys wound up for him. He expressed a preference for the clowns, but didn't like the colors.
"I want him boo'," he informed Miss Emily, "he's for a girl, and she yikes boo'."
"Blue," said the nurse austerely, "you know your mother doesn't like baby talk, Teddy."
"Ble-yew—" said the small boy, carefully.
"Blue clowns," Miss Emily stated, sympathetically, "are hard to get. Most of them are red. I have the nicest thing that I haven't shown you. But it costs a lot—"
"It's a birfday present," said the small boy.
"Birthday," from the Chorus.
"Be-yirthday," was the amended version, "and I want it nice."
Miss Emily brought forth from behind the glass doors of a case a small green silk head of lettuce. She set it on the counter, and her fingers found the key, then clickety-click, clickety-click, she wound it up. It played a faint tune, the leaves opened—a rabbit with a wide-frilled collar rose in the center. He turned from side to side, he waggled his ears, and nodded his head, he winked an eye; then he disappeared, the leaves closed, the music stopped.
The small boy was entranced. "It's boo-ful—"
"Beautiful—" from the background.
"Be-yewtiful—. I'll take it, please."
It was while Miss Emily was winding the toy that Dr. McKenzie noticed her bands. They were young hands, quick and delightful hands. They hovered over the toy, caressingly, beat time to the music, rested for a moment on the shoulders of the little boy as he stood finally with upturned face and tied-up parcel.
"I'm coming adain," he told her.
"Again—."
"Ag-yain—," patiently.
"I hope you will." Miss Emily held out her hand. She did not kiss him. He was a boy, and she knew better.
When he had gone, importantly, Emily saw the Doctor's eyes upon her. "I hated to sell it," she said, with a sigh; "goodness knows when I shall get another. But I can't resist the children—"
He laughed. "You are a miser, Emily."
He had known her for many years. She was his wife's distant cousin, and had been her dearest friend. She had taught in a private school before she opened her shop, and Jean had been one of her pupils. Since Mrs. McKenzie's death it had been Emily who had mothered Jean.
The Doctor had always liked her, but without enthusiasm. His admiration of women depended largely on their looks. His wife had meant more to him than that, but it had been her beauty which had first held him.
Emily Bridges had been a slender and diffident girl. She had kept her slenderness, but she had lost her diffidence, and she had gained an air of distinction. She dressed well, her really pretty feet were always carefully shod and her hair carefully waved. Yet she was one of the women who occupy the background rather than the foreground of men's lives—the kind of woman for whom a man must be a Columbus, discovering new worlds for himself.
"Yon are a miser," the Doctor repeated.
"Wouldn't you be, under the same circumstances? If it were, for example, surgical instruments—anaesthetics—? And you knew that when they were gone you wouldn't get any more?"
He did not like logic in a woman. He wanted to laugh and tease. "Jean told me about the white elephant."
"Well, what of it? I have him at home—safe. In a big box—with moth-balls—" Her lips twitched. "Oh, it must seem funny to anyone who doesn't feel as I do."
The door of the rear room opened, and Jean came in, carrying in her arms an assortment of strange creatures which she set in a row on the floor in front of her father.
"There?" she asked, "what do you think of them?"
They were silhouettes of birds and beasts, made of wood, painted and varnished. But such ducks had never quacked, such geese had never waddled, such dogs had never barked—fantastic as a nightmare—too long—too broad—exaggerated out of all reality, they might have marched with Alice from Wonderland or from behind the Looking Glass.
"I made them, Daddy."
"You—."
"Yes, do you like them?"
"Aren't they a bit—uncanny?"
"We've sold dozens; the children adore them."
"And you haven't told me you were doing it. Why?"
"I wanted you to see them first—a surprise. We call them the Lovely Dreams, and we made the ducks green and the pussy cats pink because that's the way the children see them in their own little minds—"
She was radiant. "And I am making money, Daddy. Emily had such a hard time getting toys after the war began, so we thought we'd try. And we worked out these. I get a percentage on all sales."
He frowned. "I am not sure that I like that."
"Why not?"
"Don't I give you money enough?"
"Of course. But this is different."
"How different?"
"It is my own. Don't you see?"
Being a man he did not see, but Miss Emily did. "Any work that is worth doing at all is worth being paid for. You know that, Doctor."
He did know it, but he didn't like to have a woman tell him. "She doesn't need the money."
"I do. I am giving it to the Red Cross. Please