She set her foot on the rug all covered with spare parts, and stooped above it eagerly. “What delightful things!” The hands through which she saw glanced in the chequered sunlight. “A box here—another box! Why you’ve arranged them like playing shop!”
“I confess now that I put it out to attract them. I don’t need half those things really.”
“How nice of you! I heard your bell in the upper wood. You say they were here before that?”
“I’m sure of it. Why are they so shy? That little fellow in blue who was with you just now ought to have got over his fright. He’s been watching me like a Red Indian.”
“It must have been your bell,” she said. “I heard one of them go past me in trouble when I was coming down. They’re shy—so shy even with me.” She turned her face over her shoulder and cried again: “Children! Oh, children! Look and see!”
“They must have gone off together on their own affairs,” I suggested, for there was a murmur behind us of lowered voices broken by the sudden squeaking giggles of childhood. I returned to my tinkerings and she leaned forward, her chin on her hand, listening interestedly.
“How many are they?” I said at last. The work was finished, but I saw no reason to go.
Her forehead puckered a little in thought. “I don’t quite know,” she said simply. “Sometimes more—sometimes less. They come and stay with me because I love them, you see.”
“That must be very jolly,” I said, replacing a drawer, and as I spoke I heard the inanity of my answer.
“You—you aren’t laughing at me,” she cried. “I—I haven’t any of my own. I never married. People laugh at me sometimes about them because—because———”