September 1 was Mary’s birthday, and it had always something of a melancholy air about it because it meant that the holidays were drawing to a close. Soon there would be the last bathe, the last picnic, the last plunge across the moor, the last waking to the sharp, poignant cry of the flying, swerving gulls.

Then in strange, sudden fashion, like the unclicking of a door that opens into another room, the summer had suddenly slipped aside, giving place to autumn; not full autumn yet, only a few leaves turning, a few fires burning in the fields, the sea only a little colder in colour, the sky at evening a chillier green; but the change was there, and with it Polchester, and close behind Polchester old Thompson stepped towards them.

Yes, Mary’s birthday marked the beginning of the end, and, in addition to that, there was the desperate, urgent question of present-giving. Mary took her present-giving (or rather present-getting) with the utmost seriousness. No one in the whole world minded quite so desperately as she what she got, who gave it her, and how it was given. Not that she was greedy; indeed, no. She was not like Helen, who guessed the price of everything that she received, and had what Uncle Samuel called “a regular shop mind.”

It was all sentiment with Mary. What she wanted was that someone (anyone) should love her and therefore give her something. She knew that Uncle Samuel did not love her, and she suffered not, therefore, the slightest unhappiness did he forget her natal day; but she would have cried for a week had Jeremy forgotten it. She did not mind did Jeremy only spend sixpence on his gift (but he was a generous boy and always spent everything that, at the moment, he had) so that she might be sure that he had taken a little trouble in the buying of it.

Jeremy knew all this well enough and, in earlier years, the question of buying had been simple, because Cow Farm was miles from anywhere, the nearest village being the fishing cove of Rafiel, and Rafiel had only one “shop general,” and the things in this shop general were all visible in the window from year’s end to year’s end. Mary, therefore, received on her birthday something with which, by sight at least, she was thoroughly familiar.

Now this year there were new conditions. The nearest village with shops was St. Mary’s Moor, some six miles away. It was there that the purchase must be made, and in any case it would be on this occasion a real novelty. Jeremy tried to discover, by those circumlocutory but self-revealing methods peculiar to intending present-givers, what Mary would like. Supposing, just supposing, that someone one day were to die and, most unexpectedly, leave a lot of money to Mary, what would she buy? This was the kind of game that Mary adored, and she entered into it thoroughly. She would buy an enormous library, thousands and thousands of books, she would buy a town and fill it with sweet shops and then put hundreds of poor children into it to eat as much as they liked; she would buy Polchester Cathedral and make father bishop. This was flying rather too high, and so Jeremy, somewhat precipitately, asked her what she would do were she given fifteen shillings and sixpence. She considered, and being that morning in a very Christian frame of mind, decided that she would give it to Miss Jones to buy a new hat with. Mentally cursing girls and their tiresome ways, Jeremy, outwardly polite, altered his demand to: “No; but suppose you were given five shillings and threepence halfpenny” (the exact sum saved at that moment by him), “and had to spend it for yourself, Mary, what would you get with it?”

She would get a book.

Yes, but what book? She clasped her hands and looked to heaven. Oh! there were so many that she wanted. She wanted “The Young Stepmother” and “Dynevor Terrace” and “The Scottish Chiefs” and “Queechy” and “Sylvie and Bruno” and “The Queen’s Maries” and—and—hundreds and hundreds.

Well, she couldn’t buy hundreds with five and threepence halfpenny, that was certain, and if she thought that he was going to she was very much mistaken; but at least he had got his answer. It was a book that she wanted.

The next thing was to go into St. Mary’s Moor. He found the opportunity ready to his hand because Miss Jones had to go to buy some things that were needed for the family the very next afternoon. He would go with her. Mary thought that she would go too, and when Jeremy told her, with an air of great mystery, that that was impossible, she looked so self-conscious that he could have smacked her.

The journey in the old ramshackle omnibus was a delightful adventure. It happened on this particular afternoon that all the Caerlyon farmers and their wives were going too, and there was a “fine old crush.” Hamlet, fixed tightly on his lead, sat between his master’s legs, his tongue out, his hair on end, and his bright eyes wicked, darting from place to place. He saw so many things that he would like to do, parcels that he would like to worry, legs that he would like to smell, laps that he would like to investigate.

He gave sudden jerks at the lead, suited himself to the rolling and jolting of the bus so that he should be flung as near as possible to the leg, parcel or lap that he most wished to investigate. Jeremy then was very busy. Miss Jones, who was a good woman and by now thoroughly appreciated by all the members of the Cole family, including Jeremy himself, who always took her under his especial protection when they went out anywhere, had in all her years never learnt that first of all social laws, “Never try to talk in a noisy vehicle,” and had a long story about one Edmund Spencer, from whose mother she had that morning received a letter. She treated Jeremy as a friend and contemporary (one of the reasons for his liking of her), and he was always deeply interested in her histories; but to-day, owing to the terrific rumblings, rattlings and screaming of the bus and to the shrieking and shouting of the farmers and their ladies, he could only catch occasional words, and was not sure at the end of it all whether Edmund Spencer were animal, vegetable or mineral. His confusion was complete when, just as they were rattling into St. Mary’s one and only street, Miss Jones screamed into his ear, “And so they had to give her boiled milk four times a day and nothing else except an occasional potato.”

The omnibus drew up in front of the Dog and Rabbit, and everyone departed on their various affairs. St. Mary’s was like a little wayside station on the edge of a vast brindled, crinkled moorland, brown and grey and green rucking away to the smooth, pale, egg-shell blue of the afternoon sky. The sea-wind came ruffling up to them where they stood. What storms of wind and rain there must be in the winter! All the houses of the long straggling street seemed to be blown a bit askew.

Jeremy and Miss Jones looked around them, and at once the inevitable “general” sprang to view. Miss Jones had to go into the hotel about some business for the rectory, and telling Jeremy to stay just where he was, and that she wouldn’t be more than “just five minutes,” vanished. Having been told to stay where he was, it was natural of him to wander down the street, inspect a greasy pond with some ducks, three children playing marbles and two mongrel dogs, and then flatten his nose against the window of the “general.”

Inspection proved very disappointing. There seemed to be nothing here that he could possibly offer to Mary: bootlaces, cards of buttons, mysterious articles of underwear, foggy bottles containing bulls’ eyes, sticks of liquorice, cakes of soap, copies of Home Chat and The Woman’s Journal, some pairs of very dilapidated looking slippers, some walking-sticks, portraits of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales, highly coloured....

None of these. Unless, possibly, the Royal Family. But no. Even to Jeremy’s untrained eye the colour was a little bright; and old Victoria.... No, Mary wanted a book. He stared up and down the street in great agitation. He must buy something before Miss Jones came out of the inn. He did not want her to see what it was that he bought. The moments were slipping by. There was nothing here. The two half-crowns and the threepenny piece in his tightly clenched palm were hot and sticky. He looked again. There really was nothing! Then, staring down the street towards the open moor and the eventual sea, he saw a little bulging bottle-glass window that seemed to have coloured things in it. He turned and almost ran.

It was the last shop in the street, and a funny, dumpty, white-washed cottage with a pretty garden on its farther seaward side. The bottle-glass window protected the strangest things. (In another place and at another time it might not be uninteresting to tell the story of Mr. Redpath, of how he opened a curiosity shop in St. Mary’s, of all places! and of the adventures, happy and otherwise, that he encountered there.)

In the shop window there were glasses of blue with tapering stems, and squat old men smoking pipes, painted in the gayest colours, and pottery (jugs to drink out of), and there were old chains of beaten and figured silver, and golden boxes, and the model of a ship with full sails and a gorgeous figure-head of red and gold, and there were old pictures in dim frames, and a piece of a coloured rug, and lots and lots of other things as well.

Jeremy pushed the door back, heard a little bell tinkle above his head, and at once was in a shop so crowded that it was impossible to see t’other from which. A young man with a pale face and carroty hair was behind the very high counter, so high that Jeremy’s nose just tipped the level of it.

“Have you got such a thing as a book?” he asked very politely.

The young man smiled.

“What sort of a book?”

“Well, she said she wanted ‘Queechy’ or ‘Sylvie and Bruno’ or—I’ve forgotten the names of the others. You haven’t got those two, I suppose?”

“No, I haven’t,” said the young man, quite grave now.

“Have you got any books?” said Jeremy breathlessly, because time was slipping by and he had to stand on his toes.

“I’ve got this old Bible,” said the young man, producing a thick, heavy volume with brass clasps. “You see it’s got rather fine pictures. I think you’d better sit on this,” he added, producing a high stool; “you’ll be able to see better.”

“Oh, that’s very nice,” said Jeremy, fascinated by Moses twisting a serpent around his very muscular arm as though it were a piece of string. “How much is this?”

“Eight pounds and ten,” said the young man, as though he’d said a halfpenny.

“I think I’d better tell you at once,” said Jeremy, leaning his elbows confidentially on the counter, “that I’ve only got five shillings and threepence halfpenny.”

The young man scratched his head. “I doubt if we’ve got any book,” he began; then suddenly, “Perhaps this will be the very thing—if you like pictures.”

He burrowed deep down in the back somewhere, and then produced two or three long, flat-looking books, dusty and a faded yellow. He wiped them with a cloth and presented them to Jeremy. At the first sight of them he knew that they were what he wanted. He read the titles: one was “Robinson Crusoe,” another “The Swiss Family Robinson,” the third “Masterman Ready.” He looked at “Crusoe,” and gave a delighted squeal of ecstasy as he turned over the pages. The print was funny and blacker than he had ever seen print before; the pictures were coloured, and richly coloured, the reds and greens and purples sinking deep into the page. Oh! it was a lovely book! a perfect book! the very, very thing for Mary.

“How much is it?” he asked, trembling before the answer.

“Exactly five shillings and threepence halfpenny,” said the young man gravely.

“That is strange,” said Jeremy, almost crowing with delight and keeping his hand on the book unless it should suddenly melt away. “That’s just what I’ve got. Isn’t that lucky?”

“Very fortunate indeed,” said the young man. “Shall I wrap it up for you?”

“Oh, yes, please do—and very carefully, please, so nobody can guess what it is.”

The young man was very clever about this, and when he emerged from the back of the shop he had with him a parcel that might easily have been a ship or a railway train. Jeremy paid his money, climbed down from his stool, then held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll come again one day and look at the other things in your shop.”

“Please do,” said the young man, bowing.

He went out, the little bell tinkling gaily behind him, and there, coming at that very moment out of the hotel, was Miss Jones.