Anne Marie stood in the window looking out into the rainy street.
Anne Marie was lonely. She had no one with whom to play. She had no one with whom to talk.
Over in a corner of the room, her knitting in her lap, Anne Marie’s grandmother, called Grand’mère, napped and woke and napped again. On the mantel-shelf the white marble clock, upon which rode a bright gilt horse and horseman who went nowhere, Anne Marie knew, ticked, ticked, ticked solemnly in the quiet room.
Downstairs in the Bakery, which was owned by Anne Marie’s father, sat Anne Marie’s mother in a gay little golden cage from which she gave change to the customers who filed past her with packages of rolls or cakes or pastries or tarts in their arms.
Anne Marie longed to be downstairs with her mother, whom she called Maman, and who was pretty and smiling, with dark curling hair and bright red cheeks like Anne Marie’s. It was so cheerful and exciting in the Bakery. Anne Marie liked the counters piled high with trays of crisp brown rolls, long loaves of bread, muffins and buns. She liked the cases filled with golden and dark and snow-white cakes, with flaky pastries and tarts. Best of all she liked to watch the people coming and going, ladies and gentlemen, little boys and girls.
But that afternoon Maman had shaken her head when Anne Marie had begged to stay with her in the Bakery.
‘The shop is not so good a place for a little girl as is the home,’ Maman had said, kissing Anne Marie and smoothing back her curls.
Then she had gone downstairs to stay until dinner-time when the shop would close for the evening.
Papa Durant had shaken his head, too, when Anne Marie, an arm about his neck, had whispered that she would like to visit the kitchen that afternoon.
‘Some other time, my little jou-jou,’ Papa Durant had whispered back, ‘some day when we are not so busy. Be a bon enfant and perhaps you may have a tart, a very little tart, for your supper to-night.’