“This way,” says the girl in the black apron (which is really a smock), taking up a squat but adorable little wooden figure which is already coloured all over, but has a curiously unfinished aspect nevertheless.  She fills a tiny brush with glittering, black enamel and begins to apply it in dots and lines.  “This long dab is supposed to be his gun.  These two little squares of black make his belt.  One line for his trousers,—­now he’s done.  He’s for a blotter.”

The little soldier has now taken on character and solidity as though by magic.  He grins at us, very martial and smart indeed, as he is stood in the rack for the enamel to harden.

No one who has ever been to the workroom of one of those art shops will ever forget it.  Personally I found it more enchanting than any regular studio I ever visited.  There was quite real art there.  Remember, those designs show no mean order of genius and imagination, and the more mechanical work is beautifully done and is constantly given a little individual, quaint twist which stamps the toys as personal works of art.  And the whole picture,—­I wish I could paint it!  The low-ceilinged room, set high up above the little court; the sunshine and the golden square outside; the girl in the black smock and the huge table covered with pots and saucers and jars of every shape and size; and the vivid splashes of colour in the bright afternoon light—­scarlet and violet and yellow and indigo and red-brown.  And the wall full of strange and brilliant little figures grinning, scowling and staring down like so many goblins!

Just as you go out of the studio your eye can scarcely fail to fall upon one particular wooden hanger to be screwed on a door.  If you know the “Rose and the Ring” by heart, as you should, it will give you quite a shock.  It is the image of the Doorknocker into which the Fairy Blackstick changed the wicked porter Gruffanuff!  It is indeed!

You know, if all these toys should come to life some moonlit night they would make quite a formidable array!  Imagine the pirates and the kicking mules and the cubist burglars all running wild together!  And there is something uncanny about them and their expressions that makes one suspect that such an event is more than half likely.

Even the advertisements for such a shop could not be commonplace.  The artist in charge proclaims that:  “Pirates are his specialty, and that he will gladly furnish estimates on anything from the services of a Pirate Crew to a Treasure Island or a Pirate Ship.”

On Washington Square is another sort of workshop,—­a place where jewelry is made by hand.  The girl who does this work draws her own designs and executes them, and the results are infinitely quainter and more beautiful than the things to be bought at jewelry shops.  She buys her copper and silver and the little gold she uses in bulk; her jewels—­semi-precious stones for the most part—­come from all over the world.  In her cool, airy workroom with the