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stationery, one of the cheaper clay doodads or some ornament like a hairpin or sewing supplies or one of the dress patterns in a shiny metal box by her desk. Sadie figured Miss Perkins had to carry those things, else she’d never sell a thing, and pretty soon folks’d be too embarrassed to come in and browse no more. It surprised Sadie that no one else had been able to figure that out, but maybe they had, and they just weren’t passing the word around out of respect or affection or more likely good neighborliness for Miss Perkins.
    There were a few real nice doodadsSadie hadn’t seen before, though — a little ceramic statue with a bright orange painted bear sniffing around a barrel that said “HONEY” on it. And a little angel with gold wings sitting on a bright blue mushroom. And a set of ivory-colored celluloid brushes, with mirror and a real cute soap container with a picture of a flower on it.
    Miss Perkins was watching her close. She’d have to be careful.
    Sadie had never been sure why she stole all the time, just that it excited her. It was something different; it seemed to add an extra tang to the day, made her feel like she was smarter than the people she was fooling, especially the grownups. She was poor, too. She supposed that might be reason enough, except she usually didn’t care too much for the stuff she stole. She could have done without it.
    She knew it was wrong, but that never seemed to bother her enough not to do it. There was lots of things folks in Morrison did was wrong — like giving her family such a hard time because of being what they was, and other things, things that people were dumb and superstitious about. So her one wrong thing didn’t seem so bad.
    Miss Perkins was talking to Alice Watkins, who’d come in to admire the ceramics lining the back shelf. Some of the finest pieces were on display there: the little shepherd with his four sheep, the scenes from fairy tales like Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and Rumpelstiltskin, the eight or nine different clowns, the twelve different vegetables. Alice Watkins came in almost every day to admire, and about twice a year she probably actually broke down and bought something.
    “I have that figure of the old fat man on the ledge of my parlor window so that it catches the light just so. Do you know he just looks at me wherever I go in the room? And everybody says something about it, Miss Perkins, they surely do. It’s the conversation piece in my house, it surely is.”
    Sadie had heard the story a hundred times. Alice Watkins seemed to find a way to drop that ceramic into every single conversation. But where most shop keeps would fall all over themselves trying to be agreeable with a customer like that, Miss Perkins just looked bored, or maybe a little worse than that — annoyed.
    “Your daughter ever come back, Alice?” she asked, none too softly.
    Alice Watkins dropped her head a second, then straightened herself, her elbows up and shoulders back. “Well, I’m afraid not. My guess is she’s trying to start a career somewheres away from these mountains, some better place where they’ll appreciate her talents. Then she’ll probably come back with some real money, and help me out a little. My Phyllis is a very kind and generous girl. A lot of folks dont know that.”
    “Hmmm,” Miss Perkins kept busy with her eyes, but they weren’t looking at that poor Watkins lady. “If she was so kind, you’d think she wouldn’t a run off without saying goodbye like that. That weren’t exactly a generous thing to do to her mother. Took your best green dress with her I hear — the one you bought right in this very shop!”
    “Oh, I’m sure she was just confused about it. I used to lend her that dress all the time for, for her dates. She probably just forgot and thought that dress was hers! ”
    “Maybe. Maybe,” Miss Perkins said. “A lot of things get into girls these days. Lots of them get confused. It’s that Confused Disease, I