ors on a narrow pavement
do not leave much room for anyone else, and people get tripped up and
have their toes crushed by the wheels, or have to step off into the
roadway to make way for Selina Ellen and Martha Theresa, who are far too
much interested in their conversation to make way for anyone. Once a
funny thing happened. An old gentleman was strolling along very slowly,
and Selina Ellen, never looking where she was going, pushed her
perambulator into him from behind. It took the old gentleman right off
his legs, whereupon he sat down backwards on to the perambulator, baby
and all! Poor baby! no wonder it screamed; it was a mercy it was not
squashed up altogether!

Yet there is some excuse for Selina Ellen and her kind, for the shops
are very beautiful. Those of you who have only seen shops in small
country towns can hardly imagine what they are like. The great
plate-glass windows stretch down the side of a street, and if you go
inside the shop you walk through room after room of beautiful things,
all arranged to show to the best advantage. The toy department would be
enough to make any little girl or boy happy even to look at it. There
are toys large and toys small; engines that can be wound up to run by
themselves; horses large enough to ride upon; balls of all colours and
sizes; and dolls--oh, the dolls! Dolls black-eyed and brown-eyed and
blue-eyed, dolls fair-haired and brown-haired, dolls dressed and
undressed. It is perhaps just imagination, but it always seems to me if
we could be there when the shop is shut up for the night and left quiet
we should hear and see some strange things.

One night, not very long before Christmas, in one of the largest shops,
the young men and women who had sold things to customers all day long
were putting away the ribbons and laces and folding up the great
curtains and the dress-stuffs to leave everything tidy for the night
before they went away to their homes. They had been there since nine
o'clock that morning, and were very tired, for people, even ladies, are
sometimes very tiresome when they come to buy; but the young men and
women have to be very polite always, and never lose their temper, or
they would be sent away. When the shop was just being shut up a lady
hurried in, and said:

'I want a doll, please, at once.'

'This way, madam,' said the tall man in the frock-coat very politely,
and he took her downstairs. 'Dolls, please,' he said to a tired,
sweet-looking girl