“No, no,” Nancy objected. “It’s lots more fun to walk and see the sights. Besides, we have plenty of time before the meeting,” she added in a lower voice.
“Isn’t this a funny little print shop, Nancy-Bell? It’s just a sort of hole-in-the-wall.” The two girls paused to look into a diminutive shop window filled with engravings and prints mellowed with age. “There’s Lady Penelope Boothby, I declare,” continued Billie, “and the older she grows, the younger she looks. It’s like the conundrum of the candle. The longer it stands, the shorter it grows.”
The girls pressed their faces against the glass to get a better view of the picture.
“Youth is always beautiful whether it’s two hundred years old or seventeen years old,” said a voice near them.
A very old man was standing in the doorway regarding them with a benign expression.
“Step inside, young ladies, and take a look at some of the prints. I have still older pictures of still younger faces that might please you.”
The girls consulted a moment.
“Come on in,” urged Billie. “We can give up ten minutes surely, and I love to go rummaging about an old shop like this.”
Into the little hole-in-the-wall, then, they went, and were greeted by a musty odor of old things laid upon shelves for ages past,—old pictures, old books; curios of all kinds,—Japanese devil fish, vases and cabinets. The girls poked about the place curiously, peering into glass cases filled with faded relics: tarnished epaulettes from an old uniform; brocaded reticules; antique jewelry; little figures in ivory, mellowed with age.
“Here is something I would like,” said Nancy at last, “because it’s the quaintest, cutest, most adorable little thing I ever saw.”