reward. For Toys gave harder work for the hands
without a capital H than Blouses and Neckwear, even when Miss Stein
was badly "peeved." Also, Mr. Tobias, the floorwalker concerned with
the toy department was "a spalpeen and a pie-faced mutt from 'way
back," whereas Fred Thorpe was a well-known angel. Yet, on the other
hand, not only were more than half the toy assistants men, but many of
the customers also were men. This made the department more lively to
be in than Blouses, and some girls considered Toys next best to
Gloves.

It was almost like coming into a strange shop when Win arrived with
Sadie before eight o'clock in the morning for her first day in
Toyland, as Earl Usher facetiously named it. The December morning
hardly knew yet that it had been born, and though already there was
life in the Hands--fierce, active life--those pulsing white globes
which made artificial sunshine whatever the weather, had not yet begun
to glow like illuminated snowballs. Shadowy men were lifting pale
shrouds off the counters. Voices chattering in the gloom were like
voices of monkeys in a dusky jungle--a jungle quite unlike that fairy
place where Peter Rolls had talked of Win to Lady Eileen. Out of the
gloom wondrous things emerged to people, a weird world--the Hands'
world of toys.

As Win strained her eyes to see through the dusk, forth from its
depths loomed uncouth, motionless shapes. Almost life-size lions and
Teddy bears, and huge, grinning baboons as big as five-year-old boys,
posed in silent, expressive groups, dangerously near to unprotected
dolls' houses with open fronts--splendid dolls' houses, large enough
for children to enter, and less important dolls' houses, only big
enough for fairies. Dolls' eyes and dolls' dresses and dolls' golden
curls caught what little light there was and drew attention to
themselves.

Some of them stood, three rows deep (the little ones in front, like
children watching a show), on shelves. Others were being fetched out
by the chattering shadows, as if they were favourite chorus girls, to
display their graces on the counters. They were placed in chairs, or
motor cars of doll land, or seated carefully in baby carriages. There
were walking dolls and talking dolls and dolls who could suck real
milk out of real bottles into tin-lined stomachs. Some exquisitely
gowned porcelain Parisiennes, with eyelashes and long hair cut from
the heads of penniless children, were almost as big and as
aristoc