“Oh, I guess he goes nosing around after old books, sort of ferrets them out, like as not. Well, so long! I’m mighty glad our shop is financially on its feet.”
As Bobs went on her way down the crowded First Avenue she smiled to herself, for it was she who had sent Mr. Van Loon a business-like letter announcing the opening of an old book shop, feeling sure that he would not miss an opportunity of seeing it if it held something that he might desire.
Fifteen minutes after her departure, Dean again heard the door open, and this time a dear little boy of three darted in and hid beneath a book-covered counter, peering out to whisper delightedly, “I’se hidin’! Miss May, her’s arter me.”
Almost immediately the pursuer, who was Lena May Vandergrift, appeared in the doorway. The young bookseller was on his feet at once and there was a sudden light in the dreamy brown eyes that told its own story.
“Good morning, Dean,” the girl said. “Have you seen Antony Wilovich? I told him to wait out in front for me so that he could escort me to the Settlement House this morning.”
Dean smiled knowingly and replied, which was his part of the game: “Well, well, has that little scamp run away again somewhere, and hidden? I guess he doesn’t love his Miss May or he wouldn’t do that.”
This always proved too much for the little fellow in hiding, and from under the counter he would dart, his arms extended. Then the girl, stopping, would catch him in a loving embrace. “I do so love Miss May,” the child would protest. “I loves her next most to my muvver over dere.” A chubby finger would point, or the golden head would nod, in the direction of the rickety tumble-down tenement across the way, the very one which Miss Selenski, the former agent of the model tenement, had called a “fire trap.”
This little game of hide-and-seek took place every morning, for Lena May had promised the “muvver over dere,” who was slowly dying of consumption, that she would call for Tony, take him to the Settlement sandpile and return him safely at noon.
If this was a merry moment each day for little Tony, it was to Dean Wiggin much more. The sweet, sympathetic girl, in her pretty muslin dress and flower-wreathed hat, suggested to the lad from the country all that he most loved, the fragrance of blossoms, the song of birds, and the peace of the meadow-pool at noon time. When she was gone, with a friendly backward nod at the crippled bookseller, he would always read poetry or try to write one that would express what Lena May was to him, to little Tony, or to the invalid mother who trusted her with her one treasure.
And so that two weeks had raised the curtain upon three dreams, but one of them was to become a tragedy.