VI
Meanwhile Pembroke had been to Houndsditch buying quantities of new toys: for every Little Mother a large doll and a work-basket, and smaller dolls and other toys for the others, together with sweets and oranges and all kinds of other things, and everything was ready by the day before Christmas Eve, and all the tickets were distributed.
The tickets were Pembroke’s idea, because one difficulty about opening a free toy-shop in a poor district of London for one day only is that even the invited children, not having had your opportunities of being brought up nicely and learning good manners, are apt to push and struggle to get in out of their turn, and perhaps even to try to get in twice, while there would be trouble, too, from the children who did not belong to the district. Pembroke knew this, and thought a good deal about the way to manage it so that there should be no crowding or difficulty. In the end Sir Franklin engaged a large hall, to which all the children were to come with their tickets, and from this hall they were to visit the shop in little companies of ten, make their choice of toys, and then go straight home. Of course, a certain number of other children would gather round the shop, but that could not be helped, and perhaps at the close of the afternoon, when all the others had been looked after, they might be let in to choose what was left. And in this state were the things the night before Christmas Eve.