ght 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 percenta