“I am not a dragon.  And there will never be a day like this for you again.”

Jean broke in at that.  “Oh, Emily, they will be wonderfuller!”

“But not this day—­”

Derry knew what she meant.  “How sweet you are.”

Miss Emily, flushing, was a transformed Miss Emily.  “Well, old people are apt to forget, and I have not forgotten.”

“Darling, darling,” Jean chanted.  “I am going to paint dragons, and they shall all have lovely faces, and I shall call them the Not-Forgetting Dragons.”

It was all very superlative.  Miss Emily tried to send them away, but they still lingered.  Jean set the music boxes going to celebrate the occasion, then stopped them because the only tunes they played were German tunes.

Derry laughed at her, then came to silence before a box of tin soldiers.  They were little French soldiers, flat on their backs, bright with paint—­

“I wonder how they feel about it?” he asked Jean.

“About what?”

“Shut up in a box, doing nothing—­”

As the lovers drove away, Emily stood at the window looking after them.  There was one customer in the shop, but Miss Emily had a feeling that he would keep himself amused until she was ready to wait on him.  She had intuitions about the people who came to buy, and this tall spare man with the slight droop of his shoulders, his upstanding bush of gray hair, his shell glasses on a black ribbon was, she was aware, having the time of his life.  No little boy could have spent more time over the toys.  He fingered them lovingly as he peered through his big horn glasses.

He saw Miss Emily looking at him and smiling.  “It was the white elephant that brought me in.  He was made in Germany?”

“Yes.”

“It is not easy to get them any more?”

“No.  You see I have a little card on him ‘Not for sale.’”

He nodded.  “I should like to buy him—­”

She shook her head.  “I have refused many offers.”

“I can understand that.  Yet, perhaps if I should tell you?”

There was a slight trace of foreign accent in his speech.  She stiffened.  She felt that he was capable of calling her “Fraeulein.”  There was not the least doubt in her mind as to the Teutonic extraction of this gentleman who was shamelessly trying to induce her to sell her elephant.

“I can’t imagine any reason that would make me change my mind.”

“My father is German; he makes toys.”

She showed her surprise.  “Makes toys?”

“Yes.  He is an old man—­eighty-five.  He was born in Nuremberg.  Until he was twenty-five he made elephants like the one in your window.  Now do you see?”

She was not sure that she did see.  “Well?”

“I want him for my father’s Christmas present.”

“Impossible,” coldly; “he is not for sale.”

He was still patient.  “He will make you another—­many others.”