She looked at her watch once more. It was early in the afternoon, only one-fifteen. Two hours stretched before her to do with as she pleased. She decided to go to the stamp store. All the Murrays except Mom collected stamps, and they had worn a beaten path to the stamp store. Mom would have none of it. “I collect stamps, all right,” she said. “I collect them off the floor and under the beds. I shouldn’t be surprised if I’d brush stamps out of my hair!”
The stamp man was glad to see her. He was small and gray and stooped. He always seemed absorbed in something he was peering at through a magnifying glass. He was like a kindly absent-minded gnome. Janie sat on a stool at the counter, and pushed off her hat. It was good to sit down after the hot walk up the street. A fly buzzed on the screen at the window, and the clock ticked. That was the only sound as the old man and the young girl pored over the bright-colored paper squares. She looked and looked, and at last decided upon three stamps, one for each of the boys. She opened her purse and reached for her money, but the money was gone. She searched again, and turned the purse upside down and shook it, but there was nothing in it but a handkerchief and two skeins of embroidery cotton.
“Oh, Mr. Marckus,” she wailed. “What will I do? I’ve lost my money.”
“Eh? What’s that you say?”
“I’ve lost my money. It must have fallen out of my purse when I fell getting out of the elevator. I wanted to buy these stamps for the boys, and now I’ve lost my money.”
Mr. Marckus carefully put a stamp down with a pair of tiny tweezers. He squinted at her distressed face.
“How much do you need,” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t really need anything. I can walk from here to the doctor’s office, and I’m getting a ride back to the lake with Daddy, but I spent a whole dollar on myself, and now I wish that I could buy something for the boys.”
“Well, you can’t charge anything here,” said Mr. Marckus in his dry, dusty, little voice. “If I gave credit to all the young ones who came in here, I’d never be able to make enough to pay my rent.”
Janie’s cheeks burned. “I didn’t mean,” she started to say.