"Why, she was our doctor in those days. She had an old shop buried away in a part of the town that we reached by crossing a canal. Many is the time my grandmother took me to that old shop with its rows of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling; with its old worn corners, and its barrel of white cocoanut oil standing near the door. Oh, I loved that place. I loved the smell of the herbs and I loved the little old woman who could brew teas from her herbs that would cure any ailment in the world, I thought. And then right next to the old herb shop was a pawn shop with three tarnished golden balls above the door."
"A pawn shop?" The children wanted to know the meaning of that kind of shop.
"A shop," said Drusilla, warming to her keen audience, "to which you could bring anything, from a worn out dress to a piece of jewelry, and get money for it and a ticket. And if you wanted the dress or the jewelry back again, then you brought the ticket and the money and a little interest.
"The old pawn shop was a landmark. It had stood next to the herb shop, my grandmother told me, for a hundred years; during all these years owned by the same family. When I was a little girl a woman kept the shop. She was very tall, very thin, with quantities of black hair braided and wound round and round her head. She wore always a Paisley shawl of faded colors, and her hair coiled as it was made me think always of a crown.
"The shop was long and narrow and full of wonderful rare, old curios—old violins, cameos, and uncut stones. I was allowed to go all over the shop; to open quaint cases, to go upstairs and out upon an old gallery and to lift from their drawers silken crapes, and to find, buried away, whispering sea-shells and crystal bottles, and irregular pieces of blue-veined marble and alabaster. Oh, the happy, thrilling hours I spent in that place! My grandmother told me that scholars came from every part of the country to see this tucked-away, historic old pawn shop."
Drusilla paused, but in a moment to the children's relief she went on: "Then on a quite busy street, back this side of the canal, the side we lived on, was a large place called an ovenry. And there we sent our bread to be baked."
The children's eyes widened.
"Yes," went on Drusilla, "we put our dough to rise at home, made it into little loaves, pricked our initial—or some other distinguishing mark—on top when it lay in its pans, and then a big red-faced man with a wagon drawn by a donkey called for our bread. Once my grandmother let me ride with him, and I stayed all afternoon in his ovenry, though the fire from the big ovens made it uncomfortably hot. I watched him and his helpers put the pans of bread on big shovels and heave them into yawning caves of flames. When they were finished, another red-faced man delivered them baked brown, and smoking, to the customers. We paid a penny a loaf for having our bread baked."
"Oh, and that saved you buying so much coal, didn't it?" asked Maizie. "I wish we had an ovenry in Anchorville."
"Yes," said Drusilla, "I think, myself, some of these old-fashioned ideas were economical."