“I will not!” Oscar said.

Christina took a deep breath. She didn’t want to insult the man who owned the building her shop was in. But she couldn’t let him act like a bully.

“Oscar, I think you need a breather. I have a thermos at the back of the store, over by the picnic baskets. Why don’t you have a break, and I’ll finish with this customer.”

Oscar glared at her. Christina glared right back at him.

“I’d like to buy this fairy,” a woman said, getting in line behind the pirate ship customer.

Reluctantly, Oscar left the counter and straggled to the back of the store. Christina gave the customer a ten percent discount and she rang up a lovely big amount on his credit card. She sold the fairy to the woman. In spite of the snow, customers continued to enter the shop, murmuring to themselves or their friends about what they needed to buy. Oscar stood with his back to Christina, arms folded over his chest, sulking.

Could this get worse? Christina wondered.

A large woman set a tiny birdhouse on the counter. “Do you gift wrap?”

Christina couldn’t imagine what a package wrapped by Oscar would look like, and she couldn’t leave him to tend to customers. “I’m sorry, we can’t today,” Christina told her. “I’ll lay it in red tissue and put it in a bag for you.” Turning her head, she asked politely, “Oscar, I’ve run out of small paper bags. There’s a stack of them in the cupboard below the picnic baskets. Could you bring me some?”

Oscar muttered something incomprehensible, but did as he was told. As he approached the counter, he stopped short, looking offended. “You’re going to put that little thing in a bag? You could easily put it in your enormous purse. Do you have any idea how much those bags cost?”

The large woman’s eyes went wide. She backed away from the counter.

Christina had had it. “Don’t mind him,” she whispered to the woman. “Alzheimer’s. I’m taking care of him today.”

The customer smiled weakly. Christina carefully wrapped the birdhouse in tissue and tucked it into one of her paper bags.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.

She took care of two other people, and then the shop was, for the first time in almost an hour, quiet.

“Oscar, your hour’s almost up. Wouldn’t you like to leave now? Go home and get warmed up?”

“Don’t try to make me think I’m a weakling,” Oscar said. “I’m staying my full hour!”

“Then maybe you’d just sit on that stool and, um”—Christina thought desperately for a task Oscar could do that would keep him from insulting her customers—“maybe keep an eye out for shoplifters?”

“Fine!” Oscar plumped himself down on the stool. After a moment, he said, “It’s cold in here!”