“He shall have an obstacle race as well,” put in Peter lavishly; “running just inside my Outer Circle radius. With hurdles and barriers and sacks and barbed wire. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Stuart darling?”
“We should have to provide a barber to barb the wire. One can’t buy it barbed.”
“Very well; I don’t mind a few shops. Just a barber and—and a post-office, because of bull’s-eyes——”
“Stamps?” enquired Stuart anxiously.
“No. Only bull’s-eyes. Why do you think I wanted a post-office?”
Merle thought that a Moonshade Shop might be useful: “It looks as if the moonshine in the Room were likely to be strong, and Peter and I must think of our complexions. Moonshades and paralunes.” And she imagined them pretty filmy things, woven of dyed spider-webs, with opalescent handles and spikes.
Then they added to the row, a Railway Shop, which, combining butcher and baker and fishmonger in one, provided those peculiar comestibles to be met with at station-buffets and in dining-cars alone. In particular, there existed the notorious Railway-fish, white and sticky, of which large numbers should swim in a sunken tank in the Railway Shop, till such time as required for consumption.
Then, as if one shop bred another, it was discovered that these wary fish could not be caught save with a bent pin on a piece of string; thus involving the erection of a Bent-pin Shop.
“Because in the usual farthing-change packets, they only give you straight pins,” said Peter, knitting her brows; “and straight pins aren’t a bit of good for Railway-fish.”