THE HYPNOTIST
THE HYPNOTIST
There were not so many carriages in the little Illinois city with chop-tailed horses, silver chains, and liveried coachmen that the clerks in the big department shop should not know the Courtlandt landau, the Courtlandt victoria, and the Courtlandt brougham (Miss Abbie Courtlandt’s private equipage) as well as they knew Madam Courtlandt, Mrs. Etheridge, or Miss Abbie. Two of the shop-girls promptly absorbed themselves in Miss Abbie, one May morning, when she alighted from the brougham. For an instant she stood, as if undecided, looking absently at the window, which happened to be a huge kaleidoscope of dolls.
A tall man and two ragged little girls were staring at the dolls also. Both the girls were miserably thin, and one of them had a bruise on her cheek. The man was much too well clad and prosperous to belong to them. He stroked a drooping black mustache, and said, in the voice of a man accustomed to pet children, whether clean or dirty, “Like these dolls better than yours, sissy?”—at the same time smiling at the girl with the bruised cheek.
A sharp little pipe answered, “I ’ain’t got no doll, mister.”
“No, she ’ain’t,” added the other girl; “but I got one, only it ’ain’t got no right head. Pa stepped on its head. I let her play with it, and we made a head outer a corn-cob. It ain’t a very good head.”
“I guess not,” said the man, putting some silver into her hand; “there, you take that, little sister, and you go in and buy two dolls, one for each of you; and you tell the young lady that waits on you just what you told me. And if there is any money left, you go on over to that bakery and fill up with it.”