Miss Chilberry, it was Netta Chilberry on the cards, had the shop that coincided with Connie Tiarks’s decision. Miss Chilberry herself, peering through the coloured forest of her Bristol glass, the face sprouting from a vase, was the colour of fallen leaves. Very dry, her breath rattled through the bell of an announcing door. She was going to look, Connie said, she did not know what, but she was going to look. She held her breath for fear of glass, and the humming birds on wires. Miss Chilberry wheezed. She rubbed her rings, the rather dirty garnets that she wore.

Buying a present it did not seem altogether material what. There was purpose enough in the present itself, whether the paper-weight, or the little cloudy box with the faded stars. Because this whatever would say what mattered, sent, no, taken, and put in Elyot’s hands. Her own on a Bristol cloud, her voice decided.

I shall take this, said Connie Tiarks. It’s a present.

It’s a dainty gift, Miss Chilberry emphasized, the words rubbing over garnets, they were encrusted with her voice.

Perhaps you would send it? Connie said.

Because, after all, to put in anyone’s hands your own visible shame.

Miss Chilberry’s face swung. Her neck was wired. She quivered like her own humming birds.

Ordinarily we don’t, she said. Except the lady, the lady that fancied marbles. Then she died.

You listened to the whistling of bone or breath. It was Miss Chilberry picking up her pen.

What is the name, dear? she said. There’s a boy we get. It’s cold. You don’t notice, of course. You’re covered. What did you say, dear, the name?

It began on the little parcel, the name, the street, that was more the perspective of a street under Miss Chilberry’s pen. Connie felt she was sinking in a lift, or the more essential Connie Tiarks, leaving a visible surplus behind. But definitely the slow, slow sinking of the lift.

There, said Miss Chilberry. A crow flew across my path this morning as I was leaving my house. Yes, she said, it was marbles. Some of them are very pretty, as you see.

Her great, swollen, leaf-coloured nose hung above the tree of humming birds, like a larger and more ominous bird itself. The mouth lolled on its words. The flanges of the nose twitched. In the wire boughs you almost heard the whirring of glass wings.

I think, Connie, I think that I may take the box. On second thought. Thank you, she said. It’s very kind, but –

Her eyes wouldn’t retreat out of Miss Chilberry’s face. But she must take the box, she knew, so much that was chance, or more than chance, hung there in Miss Chilberry’s voice.

As you like, the voice said.

It pinged in the last bell. Connie felt for the firmness of the pavement, to become a face in the King’s Road, to brush against a reassuring basket, to hit the thick, safe air that flowed out of a sixpenny store. This became her elation. The bus sang. She would take a bus. She would leave the box. Just long enough to say. Or not to say. She would leave.