Winnie Childs by C. N. Williamson

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This morning Petro was not in a good mood, for he had been reading in
the newspaper an interview with him which he hadn't given. It was all
about the "Start in Life Fund," and sounded as if he were boasting,
not only of the idea, but of the way in which he meant to carry it
out. Nobody likes to be made to appear a conceited bounder when his
intentions are as modest as those of a hermit crab, and a hundred
times more benevolent.

Therefore, when Ena came, using as an excuse a dire need of notepaper,
and stopped to dawdle, lighting one of his cigarettes, Petro felt an
urgent desire to be cross. She had on some perfume which he hated, and
a split skirt, and was altogether so inconvenient and uncongenial that
disagreeable things to say sat on the end of his tongue. He bit them
back, however, for he knew he should be sorry afterward if he were a
beast.

"You look as if you'd like to snap my head off," said Ena, fumbling
among his cigarettes.

"So I would. But I won't," said he. "It isn't you I mind. It's only
something that Raygan would call bally rot in the paper."

"Something about us?" Ena was alert in a moment.

"Only about me."

"Is _that_ all! You're so silly about having things in the paper!
Almost anything's better than nothing, I feel, as long as they don't
go raking up father's and mother's past. Oh, I know you think their
past's the best thing about them. Let's not argue. Does it say again
that you're engaged to Eileen?"

"No, thank heaven. I don't want to punch heads in her defence."

His sister laughed, and tried to make herself comfortable by putting
her feet up on the slippery whale. The split green cloth skirt fell
apart and showed a pink ankle clad in a tight-fitting film of green
silk stocking. Ena gazed at it appreciatively and liked the look of
her foot in a high-heeled green suede shoe with a gold buckle.

"My private opinion is that dear little Eileen was tickled to death by
the mistake. The only thing she didn't like about it was--its _being_
a mistake."

"If you talk like that, I'll wish the whale was Jonah's," said Petro.

"She does love you!" Ena got out hurriedly, fearing to be stopped, or
caught up in the surprisingly strong arms of Petro, and gently set
down on the wrong side of the door. "She does! She does! I've thought
so a long time. Now I know it. I mustn't tell you how."

"You oughtn't to tell me how. It isn't true and it isn't kind--to
either of us. I hate hearing such darned nonsense about a girl who
likes me as a friend. And she'd be mad as the dickens if she could
hear."

"Perhaps she'd be mad," Ena admitted, "because it _is_ true. If it
weren't she'd only laugh. You're a simple Simon not to see. Everybody
else with eyes does see. And they'll all be sorry for her if you don't
speak."

"Any one would think I was a dog and she was a bone," growled Petro.
"Speak, indeed! I wish you'd mind your own business, Ena."

"I am minding it as hard as I can," said his sister, "and you ought to
thank me for taking an interest in yours, too. Don't you _like_ poor
little Lady Eileen?"

"Very much; same way she likes me. We're good chums."

"If you don't believe what I say, Petro, there's a splendid way of
finding out. Ask her."

"See here, my dear girl, haven't you got anything better to do this
morning than to loll all over my sofa and talk drivel when I want to
write a letter blowing up somebody? I felt a fool when you came in.
Now you've made me feel a double-dyed idiot. Kindly go away and dig a
hole in the ground with yourself."

Ena went. But she felt that, despite discouragement, she had already
dug a tiny, tiny hole in very hard ground, not for herself, but for a
little seed which might perhaps send out its shoots later.

It did not precisely do that; but as the ground raked over was Petro's
heart, the seed his sister had left made him uncomfortable. It burned
and stung and felt alive, and something had to be done about it.

Of course Ena was wrong. He was the last fellow in the world a girl
could care for. He had learned that to his sorrow. A girl couldn't
even like him. There was something about him that bored her nearly to
death as soon as she began to know him fairly well, and made her want
to bolt. He was as sure, he told himself, of the exact nature of nice
little Lady Eileen's feeling for him as of his for her. Nevertheless,
that night at a dance, when he and she (for the best of reasons, they
didn't know how) were sitting out the tango, he found himself becoming
confidential.

This was strange, for Petro had one of his father's characteristics if
no other--he did not confide things in people. Peter senior kept his
own secrets because it was wise to keep them. Peter junior kept his
partly because he thought they would bore every one save himself. So
even where the two were alike, they were miles apart. For some vague
reason, however--which, if he had stopped to define it, would have
convinced him that he was disgustingly conceited--Petro was moved that
night, in a new-fashioned conservatory resembling a jungle, to tell
Lady Eileen one or two things about himself.

How it started he was not quite sure, but with some awkwardness he had
tried to lead up to the subject, and suddenly Eileen had begun to help
him out.

"I used to think a man would have to know a lot about a girl," he
said, "before he could be sure she was the sort he could fall in love
with. I thought love at first sight wouldn't be love at all, but only
infatuation. Now I see that I didn't know what I was talking about. It
isn't a question of whether you _could_ love her. You've just got to.
You can't do anything else. It's like seven devils or seven angels
entering into and possessing you. There they are before you know
what's happened. Afterward, when you find out what's struck you, maybe
it's too late. Or maybe there'd never have been any hope, anyhow."

"'While there's life, there's hope,'" quoted Eileen.

"But what if life's parted you from her?"

"I wouldn't let it, if I were a man. I wouldn't allow the girl to go
out of my life. It doesn't sound a _strong_ thing to do."

"It might be, though, in some circumstances. For instance, if a girl
showed you very plainly she couldn't be bothered with you, it would be
weak to run after her, wouldn't it?"

"I wonder," said Eileen, "if a man's a good judge of why a girl does
things that she does? Of course, I don't _know_ much. But I feel he
mightn't be. It's so difficult for girls and men to understand each
other, really. Now there's my brother Rags and our cousin Pobbles--I
mean, Portia. Pobbles is her nickname. You know we're great on the
most endlessly quaint nicknames in our family. She's quite a distant
cousin of ours, otherwise she wouldn't have such lots of money as she
has. _We're_ church mice. We'd be church worms if there were any! But
Rags was in love with Pobbles for years, and she wouldn't believe it.
She thought, because she's not exactly pretty, it must be her money he
wanted. They never understood each other a bit. You mustn't say
anything about this, and I won't say anything about what you tell
_me_. You _will_ tell me about the girl, won't you? Maybe I can help.
You see, though I don't know so very much about men yet--except
Rags--I know a whole lot about girls."

"There isn't much to tell," said Petro. "I met a girl in rather a
queer way--sort of romantic, it seemed to me. And the minute I saw her
she stood out quite different from any one else I'd ever seen, like a
red rose in a garden of pale-pink ones. I couldn't get her face out of
my mind, or her voice out of my ears. She was like my idea of a dryad.
It seemed she might turn into a tree if a man looked at her too long.
But I didn't know I was in love. I thought she just appealed to me,
fascinated me somehow or other. And I wanted to do things for her all
the time. I was always thinking of some excuse to be where she was. I
was looking forward to doing a lot more things--I suppose it was only
selfishness, because I wanted to make her like me, but I didn't
realize that till after she was gone."

"Gone?" Eileen encouraged him.

"Yes. She didn't want me to do those things I'd been planning for her.
She wouldn't have what I could do, or me, at any price."

"Did you--had you--told her you _cared_?"

"Great Scott! no. I hadn't got nearly so far as that. I told her I
hoped to see her again, that if there was something I could do to
help, I--but she wasn't taking any. She seemed friendly and kind
before that, which made it worse when she turned me down so hard. I
suppose she hadn't minded much at first, but the more she saw of me
the more she couldn't stand for the shape of my nose or the way I
talked, maybe. She just got to feel that the sight of me hanging
around would poison New York for her, and she intimated that her
health would be better if I kept at the other end of the city. You
wouldn't have had me continue to butt in, would you?"

"I don't know. What happened then?"

"Oh, she went away."

"You let her go?"

"What else could I do?"

"You could have found out where she went in case she changed her mind.
But perhaps you did find out?"

"No. For she didn't seem like the kind of girl who would change her
mind about a kind of fellow like me. Besides, I was sort of stunned by
the difference in her manner just at the moment. When I came to
myself--I mean, about wondering if I could have done anything better,
and realizing what a terrible lot I cared, she was gone. Then I hoped
Ena would hear from her. I think she promised to write. But it appears
that she never did so."

"Is she in New York still?"

"I wish to heaven I knew!"

"Couldn't you find out?"

"I might, if I wanted to be a cad."

"Why--what do you mean?"

"I dare say a private detective would undertake the job. Sometimes
I've been tempted--yet no, I don't believe I ever did come near to
playing the game as low down as that."

"But it might be for her good---"

"That's the way I argued with myself. I almost got myself convinced
sometimes. But I knew in my heart it was only sophistry. You see, it
isn't as if she would let me do anything for her, even if she wanted
anything done, which I've no particular reason to suppose she does.
She's English, and a stranger over here, but she told me--when we were
friends--that she had letters of introduction to good people and that
she'd plenty of money till they found her a job. I can't bear to think
of her needing a 'job' when I--but I'm helpless! No doubt she's all
right, and getting along like a house on fire. She was the sort of
girl who would. Or maybe she's engaged by this time to some chap worth
ten of me. But I can't forget. I think of her by day, and I dream of
her by night."

"What do you see her doing in your dreams?" Eileen asked in a new
tone of voice. Not more interested, for she had shown deep interest
before, but with a quaver of excited eagerness.

"Dreams go by contraries, luckily," said Peter, "otherwise I should
worry. I always see her in some kind of trouble. If it isn't one
darned thing it's another. And I look for her by day when I'm up in
town. I think, what if I should see her face framed in some car
window? This afternoon I even looked for her in our store--though
feeling to me the way she did, it would be the _last_ place where
she'd go to spend a cent, if she associated the name of Rolls with
mine. I bet she'd rather go without a cloak on a cold day than buy it
there!"

"Our dance, Lady Eileen," said another man, who had tracked a missing
partner through the tropical jungle.

Eileen rose reluctantly, but graciously, throwing Petro a good-bye
look. There was a sympathetic, understanding smile on her pleasant,
freckled face which seemed to say: "Don't give up. You may find her
yet. And girls _do_ change their minds about men. Anyhow, I'm glad
we've had this talk."

She was glad, though she was sad, too--just a little sad. It would
pass, she knew, for she had not let herself go far. In spite of all
that Ena had said, it had never felt true that Peter cared for her.
She could have loved him, and been happy with him, and have made him
happy, she thought, but since he didn't want her, she must set herself
to work hard not to want him. She must take her mind off the little
deep-down, bruised hurt in her heart by thinking of a way in which she
could make him happy--a way in which, by and by, he might recognize
her handiwork and send her his thanks across the sea.

"I should like him to know I did it," she said to herself. "And then
through all his life he would have to remember me because of his
happiness, which, without me, he might have missed."

Of course, Petro had mentioned no name, and Eileen had asked no
questions. If it had not been for Raygan's revelation she might not
have guessed; but now she did guess, and was almost sure. It seemed to
her that a girl who could have Petro's friendship and then drop it
like a hot chestnut didn't deserve him for a friend, much less a
lover. But there must have been some reason. It wouldn't have been
human nature, to put things on their lowest level, for a girl in Miss
Child's position to "turn down" a young man in Peter Rolls's for a
mere whim.

Could Ena have done something to put them apart? Eileen wondered. It
would--she had to admit--be like Ena. And if Ena had been treacherous
or hateful, then it would be a sort of poetical justice if she lost
Raygan through making her brother lose his dryad. Even now Eileen did
not know what Rags would do; and since their day at the Hands, he had
seemed somehow "off" the affair with Ena. But whatever happened in the
end--which, one way or the other, must come soon--between Ena and
Raygan, Peter mustn't lose the Lady in the Moon because of a stupid
promise exacted and made to get his sister out of some scrape.

Eileen wouldn't break the promise, because a promise was one of the
few things she and her brother Rags had never broken. Raygan wouldn't
release her, even if she begged him to do so, but there might be
another way--a way which might lead Petro straight to the Lady in the
Moon, if he were really in earnest about finding her. That was the
clever part of the inspiration which suddenly came to Eileen that same
night after starting up from a dream which was "endlessly quaint."

"I'll do it when I say good-bye to Mrs. Rolls," she told herself. And
the idea seemed to her so original, so filled with possibilities of
romance, that it was as soothing to the bruise in her heart as an
application of Peter Rolls's Balm of Gilead.

She guessed that he had put aside his reserve and told her about the
"dryad girl" because Ena had put him up to think that she--Eileen--had
"begun to care." The mortifying part was that it had been--almost
true. But Eileen wasn't going to mind. She was going to say to
herself, if ever the pain came back: "If I can do this for him,
surely, when he knows, he'll be glad he told me, and glad that I cared
enough to help."

It was only next morning, when the world showed its practical side,
that she realized how seldom in real life romances can be worked out
to a happy ending--or, at all events, the kind of happy ending the
people concerned are striving after.

"I'll do my best, though," she reiterated, "for Petro's sake and for
mine."

For her the lost dryad was but a shadowy figure in the background,
necessary to the picture, perhaps, yet not of poignant, personal
interest. It was only of Petro she thought.

CHAPTER XVII

TOYLAND

From her own point of view, the lost dryad was a prominent figure in
the middle of the foreground; for life was strenuous for those in the
grasp of the Hands, and it was only at night, when her body could lie
quiet while her brain was still terribly active, that other figures
assumed their due importance for Win in the great, bright picture of
New York.

It was something to be thankful for that she had escaped Peter the day
of that visit of inspection to the store. Not that she was afraid of
him or anything he could do if they should meet. That would have been
too silly and Victorian! Girls were not like that nowadays, if they
had any sense, no matter how "dangerous" men might be. But she had
liked him so much, and had been so bitterly disappointed to learn from
his own loving sister that he was not the "Mr. Balm of Gilead" created
by her imagination that it would be unbearable to meet him again, to
see him "giving himself away," and thus proving his sister right.

To be sure, after seeing Miss Rolls in the lift, certain kind
protestations of friendship had been contradicted by a frozen smile, a
cold, embarrassed eye. If Peter's sister were insincere in one way,
why not untrustworthy in others? This was one of the questions that
darted into Win's brain at night through one of the holes made there
by the giant bees of the "L" road. But the answer was obvious. Miss
Rolls might be superficial, insincere, and snobbish enough to dislike
claiming acquaintance with a girl of the "working classes," but there
was no motive strong enough to make her traduce her brother's
character. Even untrustworthy people told the truth sometimes.

It was rather fortunate, perhaps, that Win had another exciting
thought to engross her attention at this time, though it was no more
agreeable than the thought of Peter Rolls. After her conversation with
Mr. Meggison, she confidently expected to find her dismissal in the
next pay envelope. It was not there; but, suddenly and without
warning, she was dragged out of Blouses and Neckwear and dumped into
Toys.

This was as great a surprise to Sadie Kirk and Earl Usher as to Win
herself. She dropped upon them as if she had fallen out of the sky--or
at least from the top floor. And nobody knew why: whether it was a
punishment or a reward. For Toys gave harder work for the hands
without a capital H than Blouses and Neckwear, even when Miss Stein
was badly "peeved." Also, Mr. Tobias, the floorwalker concerned with
the toy department was "a spalpeen and a pie-faced mutt from 'way
back," whereas Fred Thorpe was a well-known angel. Yet, on the other
hand, not only were more than half the toy assistants men, but many of
the customers also were men. This made the department more lively to
be in than Blouses, and some girls considered Toys next best to
Gloves.

It was almost like coming into a strange shop when Win arrived with
Sadie before eight o'clock in the morning for her first day in
Toyland, as Earl Usher facetiously named it. The December morning
hardly knew yet that it had been born, and though already there was
life in the Hands--fierce, active life--those pulsing white globes
which made artificial sunshine whatever the weather, had not yet begun
to glow like illuminated snowballs. Shadowy men were lifting pale
shrouds off the counters. Voices chattering in the gloom were like
voices of monkeys in a dusky jungle--a jungle quite unlike that fairy
place where Peter Rolls had talked of Win to Lady Eileen. Out of the
gloom wondrous things emerged to people, a weird world--the Hands'
world of toys.

As Win strained her eyes to see through the dusk, forth from its
depths loomed uncouth, motionless shapes. Almost life-size lions and
Teddy bears, and huge, grinning baboons as big as five-year-old boys,
posed in silent, expressive groups, dangerously near to unprotected
dolls' houses with open fronts--splendid dolls' houses, large enough
for children to enter, and less important dolls' houses, only big
enough for fairies. Dolls' eyes and dolls' dresses and dolls' golden
curls caught what little light there was and drew attention to
themselves.

Some of them stood, three rows deep (the little ones in front, like
children watching a show), on shelves. Others were being fetched out
by the chattering shadows, as if they were favourite chorus girls, to
display their graces on the counters. They were placed in chairs, or
motor cars of doll land, or seated carefully in baby carriages. There
were walking dolls and talking dolls and dolls who could suck real
milk out of real bottles into tin-lined stomachs. Some exquisitely
gowned porcelain Parisiennes, with eyelashes and long hair cut from
the heads of penniless children, were almost as big and as
aristocratic as their potential millionaire mistresses. Humbler
sisters of middle class combined prettiness with cheapness, and had
the satisfaction of showing their own price marks.

These delicate creatures, lovely in pale-tinted robes or forlorn in
chemises, were the bright spots in the vast, dark department, shining
out through the dusk as stars shine through thin clouds. As Win became
one of the band of shadows, under Sadie's direction, gradually she
grew accustomed to the gloom, and her gaze called many of the strange
objects forth into life.

She found long-haired Shetland ponies big enough to ride, glorified
hobby horses clad in real skins, and unglorified ones with nostrils
like those of her landlady in Columbus Avenue. Biscuit-coloured Jersey
cows, which could be milked, gazed mildly into space with expensive
glass eyes. Noah's arks, big enough to be lived in if the animals
would move up, seemed to have been painted with Bakst colours.
Fearsome faces glared from behind the bars of menagerie cages. Donkeys
and Chinese mandarins nodded good-morning and forgot to stop. Dragon
broods of miniature motor cars nested in realistic garages.

Dramatic scenes from real plays were being enacted in dumb show on the
stages of theatres apparently decorated by Rothenstein. The Russian
ballet had stopped in the midst of "Le Spectre de la Rose." Suits of
armour, which Ursus called "pewter raincoats," glimmered in dark
spaces behind piled drums and under limply hanging flags or
aeroplanes ready to take flight. Almost everything was
mechanical--each article warranted to do what it pretended to do in
order to have its appeal for the modern child.

Win was a child of yesterday; yet the big girl has always the little
girl of the past asleep in her heart, ready to wake up on the
slightest encouragement, and she felt the thrill of Toyland. If when
she was small she could ever have dreamed of spending her days in a
place like this, she would have bartered her chance of heaven for
it--heaven as described in her father's sermons. It was another of
life's little ironies that her lot should be cast in a world of toys
when she was too old to prefer it to Paradise.

Sadie and Ursus had used up the little time they had in warning her
what she would have to expect in Toys.

"There are some punk fellers who'll try it on with you--pinch or
tickle you as you pass by, and say things not fit for a dandy guyl
like you to hear," the lion tamer had hurriedly explained. "But don't
you stand for it. You don't have to! Just hand 'em along to me, and
I'll make 'em sorry their fathers ever seen their mothers."

Sadie's story of girl life in Toyland was on the same lines, but with
a different moral.

"Don't you tell tales out o' school, no matter what any of the chaps
_do_," was her advice. "I kin hold my own, and I bet you can. You may
be a looker, but you ain't anybody's baby doll. If a feller calls you
'childie' or 'sweet lamb' or tells you you're the peacherino in the
peach basket, don't you answer back, but just smile and wend your
ways. If he goes so far as to put his arm around your waist or take a
nip with his nails out of your arm or hip, why, then you can land him
one on the napper if nobody's lookin'. But all the same, the chaps
mostly ain't so black at heart. They just try to decorate their gray
lives a bit, and if those sort of things didn't happen to me once or
twicet a day, why I'd be discouraged and think I'd lost my fatal
beauty."

For some subtle reason, however, "chaps" did not pinch or tickle Win
or slip arms around her waist. One confided to another that he guessed
there was nothing "didding" in that direction, and he'd as soon make
love to the Statue of Liberty as an English Maypole; which was as
well, for from the first moment of her entrance on the scene, the lion
tamer kept his eyes open. There were all sorts and conditions of men
in Toys, but he was among them as a giant among pygmies; and even if
the ex-ship's steward, the ex-trolley driver, the conjurer out of a
job, and the smart young men who had been "clerking since they were in
long pants," had wished to try their luck with Win, Earl Usher would
have shown them the wisdom of turning their eyes elsewhere.

The news soon ran round Toyland that "Winsome Winnie" was Usher's
girl. The male "assistants" did no worse than call her by her
Christian name (they must have caught it from Sadie), and that was no
cause of offence to girl from man in a department store. Every girl in
a department shared by men was "Kitty" or "Winny," "Sadie" or
"Sweetie," while the men expected to be addressed as Mr. Jones or Mr.
Brown, except by their own particular "petsies." Sadie was popular
with all, even the "permanences," who considered themselves above the
"holiday extras." The ex-steward, a good-looking young German, had
offered to get her a dandy place as stewardess when he felt ready to
sniff salt water again, and though she wasn't "taking any," and often
boxed his ears, she made "dates" with him for dance halls after
business hours, especially one called Dreamland, which was too lovely
for "wuyds." There were movies, and you could dance till 'most
morning. Real swell gentlemen, who wore red badges to show "they was
all right," came up and asked if they could "interdooce" other gents
to you, in case you'd come in alone and didn't have friends. But Sadie
always did have friends.

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