“Well, quite,” said McCredie. “They must have cost more to produce than they could ever have brought in. Those posh boys and their book enterprises.”

Ramsay and Mr. McCredie shared a conspiratorial glance at that, and both started to laugh.

“Would have been in copyright then too,” said Ramsay, shaking his head.

“Well,” said McCredie. “You clever thing.” Then he pulled himself up and turned to Carmen, who had her arms folded. “Um . . . what do you think, my dear?”

She looked at the books again. “Yes. Christmas, cold, winter, beautiful . . . yes. These will do. We’ll take these. None of the others.”

Mr. McCredie winced and looked pained, but Ramsay wasn’t remotely fussed.

“They’re lovely,” said Carmen, handling them once more. The inside color illustrations were each covered with the lightest, most delicate sheets of tissue paper. “I can’t imagine who wouldn’t want one.”

“Traumatized children?” mused Ramsay. “When we read the boys ‘The Snow Queen,’ Patrick put all our glasses in the bin in case he broke one and got a bit in his eye. Hari helped.”

“Oh, all your children,” said Mr. McCredie affectionately, at which point Carmen inserted herself and asked about prices, and bickered back and forth with him in a way Mr. McCredie found frightfully vulgar and embarrassing and Ramsay rather enjoyed, until they finally shook hands. This set Ramsay grinning cheerfully until he saw a familiar peaked hat skulking up the steps of a shop close by and knew fine well what that skulking was in aid of and charged out of the shop brandishing his keys.

The old Land Rover took off in a cough of black smoke as the peaked cap stamped crossly past the window, the machine at the ready.

“Yes!” said Mr. McCredie.

“What?” said Carmen. “He’s stealing parking!”

“He’s doing business,” said Mr. McCredie. “Paying for parking would kill his profit margin.”

“Is that what he does?”

“Well, technically he’s a laird. But poor as a church mouse with a property to keep up, and land, and about a thousand children, only some of them his own.”

“Don’t make me feel guilty for changing your buying methods,” said Carmen, “because I shan’t.”

And they worked together, setting out the beautiful new editions. They piled them irresistibly near the door whereupon, to Carmen’s delight, they started to sell straightaway—not to children, but to adults, drawn in by their own childhood memories and the beauty of a thing.

Every time the bell dinged, Mr. McCredie would glance up in wonder and surprise, and Carmen would smile secretly to herself and make sure the lovely books were somewhere adults could pick them up and admire them.