had been a Thread and Needle Shop, supplying people who did not care to
go downtown for such wares.

Then one Christmas she had put in a few things to attract the children.
The children had come, and gradually there had been more toys--until at
last she had found herself the owner of a Toy Shop, with the thread and
needle and other staid articles stuck negligently in the background.

Yet in the last three years it had been hard to keep up the standard
which she had set for herself. Toys were made in Germany, and the men
who had made them were in the trenches, the women who had helped were
in the fields--the days when the bisque babies had smiled on happy
working-households were over. There was death and darkness where once
the rollicking clowns and dancing dolls had been set to mechanical
music.

Jean, coming back with the chocolate, found Emily with a great white
plush elephant in her arms. His trappings were of red velvet and there
was much gold; he was the last of a line of assorted sizes.

There had always been a white elephant in Miss Emily's window.
Painfully she had seen her supply dwindle. For this last of the herd,
she had a feeling far in excess of his value, such as a collector might
have for a rare coin of a certain minting, or a bit of pottery of a
pre-historic period.

She had not had the heart to sell him. "I may never get another. And
there are none made like him in America."

"After the war--" Jean had hinted.