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“One fine black eye,” he answered, chuckling as he poked about in a pile of noses and selected a large-sized one. “Yes! Yes! And recently I made a lovely blue pair for a bad-tempered child who’d cried her own eyes out.”

She assented. She had heard of just such a case. “Once I saw some eyes in a shop-window,” she confided. “It was a shop where you could buy spectacles.”

He wagged his beard proudly. “I made every one of ’em!” he boasted. “Oh, yes, indeed.” And polished away at the tip of the large nose.

She considered for a moment. “I’m glad I know,” she said gravely. “I wanted to, awful much.”

After that she studied the bill-board for a time. And presently discovered that a second supply of eyes was displayed there, being set in it as jewels are set in brooches!

She pointed. “What kind are those?”

He looked surprised at the question. “The bill-board is the rear wall of my shop,” said he. “And those eyes are wall-eyes.”

She flushed with pleasure. “That’s exactly what I thought!” she declared.

She began to walk up and down, one hand in the patch-pocket—to make sure it was really there. For this was all too good to be true. Here, in this Land so new to her, and so wonderful, were things about which she had pondered, and puzzled, and asked questions—the tongues, for instance, and the lime-lights, and the soda-water. How simply and naturally each was now explained!—explained as she herself had imagined each would be. She felt a sudden pride in herself. So far had anything been really unexpected? As she went back to pause in front of the little old gentleman, it was with a delightful sense of understanding. Oh, this was one of her pretend-games, gloriously come true!

Now she felt a very flood of questions surge to her lips. She pointed to a deep yellow bowl set on the table beside him. “Would you mind telling me what that is?” she asked.

“That? That’s a sauce-box.” And he smiled.

“Oh!—What’s it full of, please?”

“Full of mouths,”—cheerily.

It was her turn to smile. She smiled into the sauce-box. At its center was a queer object, very like a short length of dried apple-peeling.

“I s’pose that’s part of a mouth?” she ventured.

He picked up the object and balanced it across his thumb. “You’ve guessed it!” he declared. “And it’s a fine thing to carry around with one. You see, it’s a stiff upper lip.” He tossed it back.

“My!” She took a deep breath. “Once I asked and asked about a stiff upper lip.”

He went on with his polishing. “Should think you’d be more interested in these,” he observed, giving a nod of the ragged hat toward a shallow dish at his elbow. “Little girls generally are.”

She looked, and saw that the dish was heaped high with what seemed to be white peanuts—peanuts that tapered to a point at one end. She puckered her brows over them.

“Can’t guess?” said he. “Then you didn’t drink enough of that soda-water. Well, ever hear of a sweet tooth?”

At that she clapped her hands and jumped up and down. “Why, I’ve got one!” she cried.

“Oh?” said the little old gentleman. “Thought so. I always keep a supply on hand. Carve ’em myself, out of cube sugar.”

“Oh, aren’t they funny!” She leaned above the shallow dish.

“Funny?” repeated the Man-Who-Makes-Faces. “Not when they get into the wrong mouth!—a wry mouth, for instance, or an ugly mouth. A sweet tooth should go, you understand, only with a sweet face.”

“Is it a sweet tooth that makes a face sweet?” she inquired.

“Quite so.” He held up the nose to examine it critically.

She watched him in silence for a while. Then, “You don’t mind telling me who’s going to have that?” she ventured, pointing a finger at the nose.

“This? Oh, this is for a certain little boy’s father.”

She blinked thoughtfully. “Is his name,” she began—and stopped.

“His father—the unfortunate man—has been keeping his own nose to the grindstone pretty steadily of late, and so—”

“I can’t just remember the name I’m thinking about,” said Gwendolyn, troubled.

He glanced up. And the round, bright eyes were grave as he searched her face. “I wonder,” he said in a low voice, “if you know who you are.”