But we have got a long way from the street where we saw the engine dashing down through the traffic, and we must come back again. All the bustle and the fuss that we have been talking of is on the roadway. What about the pavements? The pavement is often just as crowded, and though policemen don't hold up their hands to prevent people walking there, yet it is often quite a long time before you can get through, especially outside a gay shop window, where all the women want to stand and stare. In one place, where there are several big shops which stretch down one side of the street, with very pretty windows full of beautiful things, many nursemaids come to wheel babies in perambulators. This is not for the sake of the children, who are too young to care about shop windows, but it is for the sake of the nursemaids, who meet together and go slowly along two together, talking of all the fine things they want to buy, and staring with mouths and eyes round as saucers at the things they see. Now two nursemaids with two perambulators on a narrow pavement do not leave much room for anyone else, and people get tripped up and have their toes crushed by the wheels, or have to step off into the roadway to make way for Selina Ellen and Martha Theresa, who are far too much interested in their conversation to make way for anyone. Once a funny thing happened. An old gentleman was strolling along very slowly, and Selina Ellen, never looking where she was going, pushed her perambulator into him from behind. It took the old gentleman right off his legs, whereupon he sat down backwards on to the perambulator, baby and all! Poor baby! no wonder it screamed; it was a mercy it was not squashed up altogether!
Yet there is some excuse for Selina Ellen and her kind, for the shops are very beautiful. Those of you who have only seen shops in small country towns can hardly imagine what they are like. The great plate-glass windows stretch down the side of a street, and if you go inside the shop you walk through room after room of beautiful things, all arranged to show to the best advantage. The toy department would be enough to make any little girl or boy happy even to look at it. There are toys large and toys small; engines that can be wound up to run by themselves; horses large enough to ride upon; balls of all colours and sizes; and dolls—oh, the dolls! Dolls black-eyed and brown-eyed and blue-eyed, dolls fair-haired and brown-haired, dolls dressed and undressed. It is perhaps just imagination, but it always seems to me if we could be there when the shop is shut up for the night and left quiet we should hear and see some strange things.
One night, not very long before Christmas, in one of the largest shops, the young men and women who had sold things to customers all day long were putting away the ribbons and laces and folding up the great curtains and the dress-stuffs to leave everything tidy for the night before they went away to their homes. They had been there since nine o'clock that morning, and were very tired, for people, even ladies, are sometimes very tiresome when they come to buy; but the young men and women have to be very polite always, and never lose their temper, or they would be sent away. When the shop was just being shut up a lady hurried in, and said:
'I want a doll, please, at once.'
'This way, madam,' said the tall man in the frock-coat very politely, and he took her downstairs. 'Dolls, please,' he said to a tired, sweet-looking girl who stood there.
'What sort of a doll did you wish, madam?' asked the girl.
'Oh, it must be a baby doll in baby clothes with real lace. My little girl would not have one that wasn't dressed in real lace.'
'I'm afraid we haven't any with real lace, madam, but we have one or two baby dolls,' said the girl, and she took down one or two from the shelves.
'Oh no, those are hideous!' said the lady. 'The doll must have brown eyes and red-gold hair.'
'I don't think we have any like that, madam. Here is one with blue eyes and——'