like to take Jean--"

"Alone?" eagerly. "Do you think I might?"

"Why not?"

"I was almost afraid to suggest it."

"I am not a dragon. And there will never be a day like this for you
again."

Jean broke in at that. "Oh, Emily, they will be wonderfuller!"

"But not this day--"

Derry knew what she meant. "How sweet you are."

Miss Emily, flushing, was a transformed Miss Emily. "Well, old people
are apt to forget, and I have not forgotten."

"Darling, darling," Jean chanted. "I am going to paint dragons, and
they shall all have lovely faces, and I shall call them the
Not-Forgetting Dragons."

It was all very superlative. Miss Emily tried to send them away, but
they still lingered. Jean set the music boxes going to celebrate the
occasion, then stopped them because the only tunes they played were
German tunes.

Derry laughed at her, then came to silence before a box of tin
soldiers. They were little French soldiers, flat on their backs,
bright with paint--

"I wonder how they feel about it?" he asked Jean.

"About what?"

"Shut up in a box, doing nothing--"

As the lovers drove away, Emily stood at the window looking after them.
There was one customer in the shop, but Miss Emily had a feeling that
he would keep himself amused until she was ready to wait on him. She
had intuitions about the people who came to buy, and this tall spare
man with the slight droop of his shoulders, his upstanding bush of gray
hair, his shell glasses on a black ribbon was, she was aware, having
the time of his life. No little boy could have spent more time over
the toys. He fingered them lovingly as he peered through his big horn
glasses.

He saw Miss Emily looking at him and smiling. "It was the white
elephant that brought me in. He was made in Germany?"

"Yes."

"It is not easy to get them any more?"

"No. You see I have a little card on him 'Not for sale.'"

He nodded. "I should like to buy him--"

She shook her head. "I have refused many offers."

"I can understand that. Yet, perhaps if I should tell you?"

There was a slight trace of foreign accent in his speech. She
stiffened. She felt that he was capable of calling her "Fraeulein."
There was not the least doubt in her mind as to the Teutonic extraction
of this gentleman who was shamelessly trying to induce her to sell her
elephant.

"I can't imagine any reason that would make me change my mind."

"My father is German; he makes toys."