near Reddy's
home, and so he now frequently accompanied his mother to the place where
she worked. The little room had a funny fireplace called a stove, on
which his mother made tea and the girls roasted chestnuts, and it had no
other ordinary furniture except a long form. But the walls were
mysterious. Three of them were covered with long white cloths, which
went to the side when you tugged them, and then you could see on rails
dozens of garments that looked like nightgowns. Beneath the form were
scores of little shoes, most of them white or brown. In this house
Tommy's mother spent eight hours daily, but not all of them in this
room. When she arrived the first thing she did was to put Elspeth on the
floor, because you cannot fall off a floor; then she went upstairs with
a bucket and a broom to a large bare room, where she stayed so long that
Tommy nearly forgot what she was like.

While his mother was upstairs Tommy would give Elspeth two or three
shoes to eat to keep her quiet, and then he played with the others,
pretending to be able to count them, arranging them in designs, shooting
them, swimming among them, saying "bow-wow" at them and then turning
sharply to see who had said it. Soon Elspeth dropped her shoes and gazed
in admiration at him, but more often than not she laughed in the wrong
place, and then he said ironically: "Oh, in course I can't do nothin';
jest let's see you doing of it, then, cocky!"

By the time the girls began to arrive, singly or in twos and threes, his
mother was back in the little room, making tea for herself or sewing
bits of them that had been torn as they stepped out of a cab, or helping
them to put on the nightgowns, or pretending to listen pleasantly to
their chatter and hating them all the time. There was every kind of
them, gorgeous ones and shabby ones, old tired ones and dashing young
ones, but whether they were the Honorable Mrs. Something or only Jane
Anything, they all came to that room for the same purpose: to get a
little gown and a pair of shoes. Then they went upstairs and danced to a
stout little lady, called the Sylph, who bobbed about like a ball at the
end of a piece of elastic. What Tommy never forgot was that while they
danced the Sylph kept saying, "One, two, three, four; one, two, three,
four," which they did not seem to mind, but when she said "One, two,
three, four, _picture_!" they all stopped and stood motionless, though
it might be with one foot as high as t