She glanced at him curiously.  It was hard to reconcile this slim young man of fashion with the shabby boy of the other night.  But there were the lad’s eyes, smiling into hers!

“I should like, too, if you don’t mind, to find a toy for a very little girl.  It is her birthday, and I had forgotten.”

“It is dreadful to forget,” Miss Emily told him, “children care so much.”

“I have never forgotten before, but I had so much on my mind.”

She brought forth the Lovely Dreams—­“They have been a great success.”

He chose at once a rose-colored cat and a yellow owl.  The cat was carved impressionistically in a series of circles.  She was altogether celestial and comfortable.  The owl might have been lighted by the moon.

“But why?” Derry asked, “a rose-colored cat?”

“Isn’t a white cat pink and puffy in the firelight?  And a child sees her pink and puffy.  If we don’t it is because we are blind.”

“But why the green ducks and the amethyst cows?”

“The cows are coming tinkling home in the twilight—­the green ducks swim under the willows.  And they are longer and broader because of the lights and shadows.  That’s the way you saw them when you were six.”

“By Jove,” he said, staring, “I believe I did.”

“So there’s nothing queer about them to the children—­you ought to see them listen when Jean tells them.”

Jean—!

“She—­she tells the children?”

“Yes.  Charming stories.  I am having them put in a little pamphlet to go with the toys.”

“She’s Dr. McKenzie’s daughter, isn’t she?  I saw her last night at the play.”

“Yes.  Such a dear child.  She is usually here in the afternoon.”

He had hoped until then that Jean might be hidden in that rear room, locked up with the dolls in a drawer, tucked away in a box—­he had a blank feeling of the futility of his tea-cup—­

Then, suddenly, the gods being in a gay mood, Jean arrived!

At once his errand justified itself.  She wore a gray squirrel jacket and a hat to match—­and her crinkled copper-colored hair came out from under the hat and over her ears.  She carried a little muff.  Her eyes—­the color of her cheeks!  A man might walk to the world’s end for less than this—!

He was buying, he told her, pink pussy cats and yellow owls.  Had she liked the play last night?  He was glad that she adored Maude Adams.  He adored—­Maude Adams.  Did she remember “Peter Pan”?  Yes, he had gone to everything—­glorified matinees—­glorified everything!  Wasn’t it remarkable that his father knew her father?  And she was Jean McKenzie, and he was Derry Drake!

At last there was no excuse for him to linger.  “I shall come back for more—­Lovely Dreams,” he told Miss Emily, and got away.

Alone in the shop the two women looked at each other.  Then Emily said, “Jean, darling, how dreadful it must be for him.”