THE GIRL WAS very much like a small child indeed as she explored the various items in the shop.
'You like toys?' Falter Macree said.
Vetta paused in her exploration.
'I am unsure,' she replied.
'All children like toys.' The man gulped as he said this for clearly not all children liked his toys. There they sat on various shelves. Untouched. Unwanted. Unloved.
Vetta looked at some blocks of wood. Building blocks supposedly, yet they appeared merely pieces of wood tidily placed upon a shelf, a miniature supply of builders' material. She held up a piece and smiled.
'When I was young I did not play with toys,' she said, now all of eleven years old. 'I learnt from them.' She turned the block over in her fingers thoughtfully. 'Some toys I ran with and threw and chased about so that I got the desired exercise papa wished me to have to stay healthy. And some I shared with others to help make friends.'
'Was all that fun?'
There was a silence in the shop which seemed to linger. From the back room a slight sound could be heard and Marthy stepped softly into the show room. She glanced uneasily at her husband and then fixed her gaze on the girl, soft pale curls dancing in the light as she gathered more of the blocks in a curious embrace, almost like a hunger to acquire. Some she dropped and then picked up, and then she placed them on the counter in neat rows.
'See,' she said. 'What do these blocks tell you? They are all the same. To look from one to another is like gazing at one patch of blue sky and then at another. It is fascinating but doesn't make me think any more than that.'
She added more blocks, slightly smaller ones.
'A little better,' she sighed. Then abruptly she turned big blue eyes on the toymaker and smiled, her face shining with the light of inspiration.
'What if,' she said, breathing in little shallow gasps, 'what if you were to paint these blocks? Not just one colour, but different ones, like a rainbow? Each colour tells something about the one next to it. I am blue and you are almost blue. No I am green and you are almost green like me.' It was comical the way she rehearsed these conversations, moving back and forth, and Marthy Macree smiled, a curious pain in her heart at variance with that smile. Vetta's own demeanour was one of rising excitement.
'You could number the colours too,' she said in a burst of inspiration. 'Anyone with a complete set might line the colours up by shade. This would line the numbers too and the blocks would have to admit their closeness to each other.'
'There is fun in that?'
'It is a challenge. And the outcome would be like knowing things I think. Learning numbers and learning colours.' Then she rolled a block over and over. 'There are six sides,' she said excitedly as if more ideas were coming to her. 'Different colours, more numbers, multiples of numbers, lots and lots of them. And words too! Names of things.' She sat down on the floor with some blocks and arranged them in imaginary ways, lost in her own experiments, reliving past joy, forgetting there was anyone else there.
Falter Macree and Marthy looked at each other, the one frowning and the other smiling softly. Then Vetta stood abruptly and the silent exchange of thoughts between the couple was interrupted by another surge of exploration.
The girl, having abandoned her blocks, went over to where small jigsaw pieces sat in boxes. She held up one between finger and thumb.
'You could make these bigger,' she said brightly.
'Why?' the man mouthed, shaking his head.
'Exercise,' his wife supplied the answer quickly, catching on to the girl's theme. 'Moving things about. Stretching, twisting, reaching and grasping.'
Vetta smiled, dropping the piece back into its box with a clatter. Then she went over to the dolls.
'How lovely these clothes are,' she said, admiring the complex, colourful stitching of dainty frocks upon the wooden figures with their simple carved faces, blank staring eyes and woollen straggles of hair.
'I made them,' Marthy said quietly.
'I am amazed,' Vetta declared 'They would look lovely on real children too.'
She took a doll down, cradled it in a way that made Marthy Macree's heart ache, and then replaced the figure neatly where she had found it, positioned so that it appeared to be conversing with another doll sat in another splendid frock, like they were the best of friends having a gossip.
'I have found,' Vetta said in that solemn explanatory way she had when trying to impart thoughts to others that were hard for her own self to grasp, 'many people learn about things from others in all sorts of ways. They show things and display things and pass on little bits of information in things that fly.'
'Flyers,' Falter said grimly.
'They spread this good news far and wide so everyone can benefit from it.'
'Advertising,' Falter added more grimly.
'I know you must tell people about this lovely toy shop because all shops tell everyone they are there.'
'Trade directory,' Marthy said with a laugh.
'But,' and Vetta paused.
'But what?'
'These clothes are not like toys. They could be real.'
'They could,' and Marthy's voice broke a little as she said this.
Vetta wondered if the couple had children of their own as her mind raced through ideas.
'And real children should be told about them.'
'They might.' There was another surge of pain in Marthy's Macree's side just then and she took a deep breath. Her husband went to her.