excuse. She really needed it.

Then she saw the foolishness of all this and tried to think of
something else. She worked another scallop, and concluded to go for a
walk.

When she stepped out of the gate, she turned her back upon the shop
and walked in the opposite direction, but a quarter of an hour later
she might have been seen approaching it by way of Pleasant Street.

It was a beautiful October day; there was a suggestion of autumn in
the maples, but the air was soft as spring. As she stood before the
door her heart beat guiltily; her own home across the way wore an
oddly unfamiliar look.

Being a shop one was, of course, expected to open the door and walk
in. Miss Virginia did so, and for a bewildered moment felt she had
made a mistake, for there was nothing in the room she entered that
seemed to bear any relation to a shop.

In the window, where the ferns and palms were, three persons sat, two
young women and a small boy in socks. One of the three rose and came
to meet her. The identity of the face with the one she had seen
through the opera glass so recently, added to her confusion.

"Can I show you something?"

Miss Virginia gazed at the speaker despairingly. "I have forgotten
what I came for," she stammered.

It might have been an everyday occurrence to have customers who had
forgotten what they wanted, for anything the manner of the young woman
showed. She smiled indeed, but sympathetically, saying she often
forgot things herself; and, pushing forward a willow chair, added,
"Won't you sit down and let me show you some of our things?"

Not seeing her way clear to escape, Miss Virginia accepted the chair.
There were other chairs of the same variety, some of them supplied
with cushions; around the olive-tinted walls were low cases which
might hold books or anything; there was a table with a lamp and
magazines upon it, and in the corner fireplace a low fire flickered.
The most businesslike piece of furniture was the long table upon which
the young woman was laying out a bewitching assortment of collars and
cuffs of a daintiness that went to the heart. Miss Virginia forgot her
embarrassment in her pleasure at the array of pretty things.

The small boy crossed the room, and depositing a gray flannel donkey
on the table leaned upon Miss Virginia's chair. He was a pretty child,
and she smiled at him as he lifted his serious brown eyes.

"Jack likes to see what you are doing, but you mustn't sell him by