THE WEE SHOP.

Otago Witness, Issue 4042, 1 September 1931, Page 74

THE WEE SHOP.

The window of the wee shop seemed to peer through the dusk as though it were looking wistfully for the customers that were so evasive nowadays. They passed by, always evidently going somewhere else to buy—to be wanting something they didn’t believe the wee shop stocked.

Larger premises meant wider choice for one’s money, and, then, the big shops were so brightly lighted of an evening. Light was a great point in these days; it drew customers as it does moths. The windows, too, so attractive in their artistic window-dressing, had a lure born of skill.

.When Annie Tosh had started her shop art had not been much considered in setting out her stock in th e window Annie just stuck things in lavishly, and people bought them. But then, that was in the days before the big “ lands ” had leapt up, storey by storey, all round Annie Tosh’s “ Fancy Emporium,” and a swelling population, pouring out of plethoric flats, had called for lots of things Annie had never thought of. The Fancy Emporium had got pushed aside into a backwater of the stream of custom, and once folk got into the way of going to other shops—why, that was just it. “ The way.” All business people know about that.

Yet the wee shop had been so obliging —so ready with its wool, and needles and pins, and tacks, and trouser buttons, elastic,, gas mantles, toys, brooms, pails. Emporium is a big word, and Annie Tpsh made it cover all these articles.

Now, though it still flaunted Fancy Emporium ” above its narrow doorway, everybody called it the “ wee shop.” “ A shilling an’ three-ha’pence—takin’s for the whole day,*’ murmured Annie Tosh as she stared into the till. “ That puts the lid on —this canna’ go on—everybody passin’, passin’ as if the Emporium was invisible. The shutters must go up for keeps, afore—afore I’m a—bank—bankruptess.” Two tears falling into the till seemed strangely to make the “takings” look smaller even than they were. “Yet.” thought Annie, “the blood o’ my fathers was always in shop keepin’, an’ I thought it was in me too. Appears I was mistook—or I wouldna’ ha’ failed like this.”

Annie sat staring before her, and some--how she began to think about the past, as one is apt to do in moments of sadness and discouragement. She saw herself at the tender age of six playing shops on the shores of Gourock, Dunoon, or Roth csay—it all depended on where the Tosh family spent their fortnight “ doon the waiter.”

She saw herself playing with a wee boy—they seemed to drift together to shop-keeping, when other children were throwing stones in the sea, or wading, etc. ’ • "

She minded it so well, and now a smile was on her lips. She was pretty still, Annie was. with the long-lasting prettiness that neat little regular features can give, a steady pink colour like a wax doll’s, and hair so fair that greying goes unnoticed. Willie MacMurtrie—that was the wee boy’s name. He was the son of a Glasgow man who had quite a big boot shop, quite important in the trade, and original too in advertisement. He had a big scrawl in gold over his front window:—

Gilding, will fade in damp weather; To endure there is nothing like leather, though he didn’t even know that the words were out of Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales. He specialised severely in boots, and Annie remembered now how the blood of his father showed in Willie, the way he wanted to specialise; would deal restrainedly only, in different sorts of sand and dulse, when playing shops, when Annie wanted to stock also daisies and grasses.

“ Maybe, if I had specialised I would ha’ succeeded,” murmured Annie, “ like these women milliners and dressmakers that put one hat or robe in their window —me! I couldna’ bear to waste the space; for what’s space for, if it’s no to put things in?” argued Annie—and only perhaps Einstein could have answered that! Then she wondered if Willie MacMurtrie was married. She used to think he bad a sort of fancy for her when they were in their late’ ’teens, but he had never said “anything”; and then Willie had gone to another town, and, after that, abroad. She had never heard of him afterwards.

But now she put Willie out of her mind. She had a big job before her. She meant to sort up the wee shop, starting to-morrow, preparatory to selling off. The wee shop was done. To-morrow she was going to ticket all her stuff at appalling reductions “But oh, how am I goin’ to do it?” whispered Annie Tosh, as she laid her head down suddenly on the counter, and pictured herself shutting the wee shop for the last time. “ Yet, one an’ three ha’pence—how could the lid be tighter on nor that ? ”

So, on the following day, Annie went at the big job from morn till eve, ticketing her stock. She could scarcely bear to look the helpless, glassy-eyed dolls in the face as she pinned values on their squeaking abdomens—squeals of protest at the dreadful reduction going on, they seemed to give.

Everything in the shop peered through the dusk at her reproachfully, as if they all knew she was undervaluing them.

Annie’s tears were simply splashing into a little tin pail she was giving away at threepence half-penny, when a big figure entered the shop door.

“You’re a ‘traveller,’ I suppose?” said Annie, hurriedly, wiping her eyes; “ Well, ye needn’t mind openin’ your sampler wee bag. I’m no’ needin’ dolls, or brushes, or pails. I’ve got three gross bools, an’ two hunnert-au-fifty boxes o’ matches—an’ mayby three-hunnert-thoosan’ tin tacks. I’m no’ wantin’ anythin’ in any line, for I’m sellin’ off before I—l fail,” cried Annie shrillv, hysterically. “Annie! d’ye no’ mind me?” said the “ traveller,” as the big figure leant across the counter; “ I’m wee Willie MacMurtrie, that kep’ shops wi’ you in the past.” “ Wu—Wu—Willie.” exclaimed Annie, staring incredulously; “ where ha’ ye come frae? ”

“ Across wide seas. I’ve been in Austraylia wi’ an uncle, on a sheep farm, an’ I’m a story-book man, come home wi’ the ‘ forchune ’ he’s left me, an’ I’m going to keep a shop o’ ma ain.”

“ Ah, Willie, you an’ me was aye alike about shops; the blood o’ oor fathers in us; but—with a quivering sigh—maybe the strain weakens in the female line— I've failed.”

“ Annie,” with a nervous chuckle, “ could ye no’ let the blood o’ your mother get a word in now? She was a

> housekeeper; I mean—she—she was merrit, ye understand.” “I couldna’ take a place now—the cookin’ an’ the sweepin’ ud be too much for ine.” “ But we’d ha’ a servant for a’ that.” “ We ? ” echoed Annip, staring. “ Sure, d’ye no’ understand it’s a proposal o’ merriage I’m makin’? I wantit ye, Annie, when I was a lad, an’ I minded ye when I was abroad—but I hadna’ the money tae fix up wi’ till the now, an’ I come home to find ye, so’s we could keep a shop an’ a house thegither.” “Oh, Wu-Wu-Willie! this is terrible sudden,” gasped Annie, the wax-doll pink of her cheeks deepening to the tint of a ripe apple. Willie moved slowly- round the counter. “ But no,” he said ingratiatingly—“no’ just too sudden, Annie?” * * * They closed and locked the door of the wee shop together. Things like that are easier, and cheerier done when two do it, and Willie, talking loudly of the fine big hoot-shop he and Annie were going to have, drowned the sound of the nightwind that had begun to “ wuther ” rather mournfully down the street, as if it guessed that the wee shop was shut for “ keeps.” Yet, as the shadows crept round it they seemed to whisper comfortingly that, at least, the’ romance of things of a bygone day would ever lie with the wee shop rather than with the big one. “ And romance,” breathed the ghostly shadows, “ is really much more desirable than money, after all. “Is it?” whispered back the wee shop wistfully, on the keening whistle that blew through the keyhole of its shut door, and thinking, maybe, of its empty till—with only two tears in it now.— Rita Richmond, in the Glasgow Weekly Herald.