Margarita Gerry - The Toy Shop - A Romantic Story of Lincoln the Man

The next instant he had seen something that brought grief back again – something that reminded him of his burden. For, marching valiantly over the shelves, storming wooden boxes flanked with cannon, were toy soldiers. There were, too, all the necessary trappings of combat – swords, guns, soldier suits, arrayed in which youthful generals could marshal their forces and sweep the enemy's army before them – while their fathers elsewhere learned the tragedy of war.

Behind the counter was a pretty, young-faced woman, who looked her fifty years only from the softness sometimes brought by the records of many days. She smiled at him in friendly fashion and, unhurried, waited his request. While she reached for the toys the son had asked for, the Man, bent over the counter, fingered the dolls left lying there from the last small purchaser with clumsy, gentle fingers.

"Who makes that 'dolly' furniture?" he asked, idly. "I wish I could get any one to work for me one-half so well. Carved, too. I didn't know there were tools fine enough to make those tiny wreaths."

Mrs. Schotz shook her head at him good-humoredly.

"My man, he speak English. I – not – can." Following her gesture, the stranger saw, in the back part of the shop, a patient figure at work.

Joseph Schotz was sitting in an invalid-chair, a table littered with tools and bits of wood by his side. One leg, bandaged and swathed, rested on a cushion. His strong peasant face was seamed and drawn with pain.

The Man was beside him in an instant.

"Yes, I make the dolls' houses and carve the furniture – great work, that, for a man, sir? I used to be a cabinet-maker at Annapolis – before my leg got so bad. No, sir, I did not learn my trade there. I was apprenticed to Cadieux, who was cabinet-maker to Napoleon. Yes, the Emperor. Who else could it have been? But that was after those pigs of Russians shot me in the leg. It was their ball that brought me here," with a contemptuous glance at his bandaged leg. "I was color-bearer – you see, I was too young to go in any other way. I was sixteen when I was wounded."

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