The Tin Soldier | Page 5

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 don't be stuffy about it,
Daddy."
"Am I stuffy?"
"Yes."
He tried to redeem himself by a rather tardy enthusiasm and succeeded.
Jean brought out more Lovely Dreams, until a grotesque procession
stretched across the room.
"Tomorrow," she announced, triumphantly, "we'll put them in the
window, and you'll see the children coming."

As she carried them away, Doctor McKenzie said to Emily, "It seems
strange that she should want to do it."
"Not at all. She needs an outlet for her energies."
"Oh, does