Wonderful Woolworth was opening a new shop. Mrs Heriot came to explore with the rest of the crowd. A pretty woman, and desperately sad-looking. She had never been in a Woolworth shop before, and was enchanted by the cleverness of it — the attractive way everything was arranged, and the ingenious play on the slogan ‘6d’. Everything sixpence, from a pepper pot to a baby’s bonnet. Boot trees, sixpence. Aha! sixpence each — in other words a shilling. But wonderfully cheap at that. Oh, but astonishing!
‘Marvellous, marvellous!’ murmured Mrs Heriot, beginning to buy. She bought a block of writing paper for sixpence, an orange bathing cap for her bath, some bright little bead mats, ‘to put under the teapot, madam’, (Nannie would like these), a pair of scissors (sixpence the scissor), and a quantity of kitchen things.
It was a dense, but quiet, good-natured crowd. She was swept along with it, carrying her spoils. A counter of little soap figures attracted her. They were delightful and amusing. She had seen the same thing before, but, here at Woolworth’s, ranged all together, they seemed little aristocrats of the soap world. She would buy two for the children; and she bought a pink baby and a Mickey Mouse. As they were being wrapped up, she noticed standing beside her a pale little girl whose chin just reached the level of the counter, who gazed with intense longing at the soapy wonders.
She was a poor little girl, and her mother beside her was puckering up her hard honest face over bars of household soap and such horrid necessities of life. She didn’t look the kind of woman who would waste, or could afford to waste, a penny upon childish whims.
There didn’t seem to be much chance of that little girl getting what she wanted. No, no chance at all.
Mrs Heriot took her parcel and walked away, but the child’s face with its look of longing had arrested her. Had not she herself longed — oh! but how hopelessly — for the unattainable? What she longed for could never, never be hers. How ridiculous to think of that on the same day as a piece of soap! Never mind, it was all a question of degree. Here was a chance …
She turned, and found the girl still contemplating. She nudged her quietly.
‘Here, my dear, this is for you.’ The parcel changed hands in a moment. The child gasped, but Mrs Heriot did not give her time to speak, and disappeared into the crowd. The parcel was furtively opened. The very ones! She’d watched the lady buy them. Oh, Lordy! her own, her very own.
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‘Come along — time we got home.’
The voice and horny hand of her mother brought her back to earth. Through the crowd they went. Oh, Gawd, supposing! —
She hid the parcel under her jacket.
‘What’s that you got there? What are you hiding? Speak up now! What is it? Come along, hand it over!’
The parcel was seized.
‘Where you get this? Come along now. Out with it.’
‘A lady give it me.’
‘A lady! Yes, I should say so. You don’t think you can come that over me again, do you? That’s what you said when you stole the plums, or something like. “A lady give it me”,’ she mimicked. ‘Yes, I shouldn’t wonder. There’s lots of ladies going round buying soap dollies to hand over to strange kids in the street. A likely tale, that, my handsome!’
‘But it’s true. A lady did give it me,’ she repeated furiously, and knowing that it was no good. ‘I tell you she did. I never took them. There’s the parcel and the bill. If I’d took them there wouldn’t be no parcel and no bill.’
‘I’m not saying you took them off of the counter; you took them off of someone, and that’s a sure thing. It wasn’t enough that hiding your dad give you when you stole the plums? You can’t stop your hands from picking and stealing, can’t you? I’ll soon show you. You think I’m going to have a thief in my family? Shaming your dad and me what have never had a breath against us? Not much, my girl, and if a hiding don’t teach you I shall have to think of something else. Here goes for a start, anyway!’
She threw the parcel into the traffic. The pink baby was crushed instantly by a motor-bus, and the Mickey Mouse rolled out of sight.
The little girl’s face tightened with rage, and tears of despair rolled down her cheeks.
She determined from that moment never to miss an opportunity of stealing.
Mrs Heriot, the same night, writing a letter to somewhere very far away, told the story of the little girl and the soap dolls.
‘It was a wonderful moment for me, my dear, to know that I was helping someone to reach the Unattainable — though it probably seems trivial to you — (no, not to you). Such a heavenly surprise for her, and I love to think of that sad little person rejoicing tonight. She did want them so very much!’