The little shop was a modest place. On one side was a counter where, safe under glass, were home-made candies and cakes, with a rosy-cheeked apple or two. But, lining the walls, tumbling over shelves, crowded into old-fashioned presses, were the toys. There were dolls, of course, patrician wax dolls with delicate eyebrows of real hair, hearty, wooden-jointed dolls that were a real comfort to little mothers. There were wheels of fortune where one could see a steeple-chase if he spun hard enough to make the horses vault the hurdles. There was a fascinating confusion of supplejacks, house furniture, houses of Oriental magnificence, little imported German toys--horses, trees, dogs. As the Man's melancholy eyes comprehended all that the place contained to minister to childish delight, something of the bitterness left them. In its place was a curious inertness. One would have said that the man's being was paralyzed with doubt.
The next instant he had seen something that brought grief back again--something that reminded him of his burden. For, marching valiantly over the shelves, storming wooden boxes flanked with cannon, were toy soldiers. There were, too, all the necessary trappings of combat--swords, guns, soldier suits, arrayed in which youthful generals could marshal their forces and sweep the enemy's army before them--while their fathers elsewhere learned the tragedy of war.
Behind the counter was a pretty, young-faced woman, who looked her fifty years only from the softness sometimes brought by the records of many days. She smiled at him in friendly fashion and, unhurried, waited his request. While she reached for the toys the son had asked for, the Man, bent over the counter, fingered the dolls left lying there from the last small purchaser with clumsy, gentle fingers.
"Who makes that 'dolly' furniture?" he asked, idly. "I wish I could get any one to work for me one-half so well. Carved, too. I didn't know there were tools fine enough to make those tiny wreaths."
Mrs. Schotz shook her head at him good-humoredly.
"My man, he speak English. I--not--can." Following her gesture, the stranger saw, in the back part of the shop, a patient figure at work.
Joseph Schotz was sitting in an invalid-chair, a table littered with tools and bits of wood by his side. One leg, bandaged and swathed, rested on a cushion. His strong peasant face was seamed and drawn with pain.