things comfortably from a yard off and
without handling them at all. The prettiest doll loses most of its
interest if one cannot count how many petticoats there are under its
dress, and examine how much of its neck is made of wax, and where the
stuffing begins. And what can be duller than a mechanical mouse,
unless one can wind it up to run on the floor?

Madge decided at once that under such very peculiar circumstances as
the present she need not keep to Miss Thompson's rule. After all it
would be simply ridiculous to be standing inside the counter and left
in charge of the shop without even daring to look at the things she was
supposed to be selling. So, to provide herself as it were with a good
excuse, she took up a duster that she found lying on a chair, and began
carefully to rub over all the interesting things. The piles of
envelopes and writing-paper Madge did not consider required much
dusting, but pen-wipers in the shape of pigs, and work-boxes covered
with shells arranged in patterns, clearly called for a great deal of
attention.

Although Mrs. Winter was very particular about calling her shop a
stationer's, she really seemed to sell a little of everything. Madge
could see very well that it was just the kind of place where she would
be able to choose the sort of interesting things that Betty and John
expected. When she got her money back she would set seriously to work
to spend it at Mrs. Winter's before she met with any further
misadventures.

"It isn't many people who have first kept a shop and then bought things
out of it all in one afternoon, I should think," she said aloud, as she
vigorously dusted a mug adorned with coloured portraits of the royal
family.

At that moment there was a great push, and the door flew open.

"How quick you have been!" began Madge; then she stopped suddenly and
almost dropped the mug. It was not Mrs. Winter who came in, but a girl
a few years older than herself, evidently a customer.

"I want a fashion-paper," said the new-comer in a harsh voice. "One of
those with big coloured pictures of ladies in party-dresses and
ball-gowns. Something smart, you know. It's for myself--Miss Amelia
Block of Ivy Villa."

Madge felt that she was expected to know the name, and that Miss Amelia
Block was, in her own estimation at least, a very important person.
Perhaps she was in the habit of buying fashion-papers at this shop.
She probably had copied her hat, which was very