acy Mr. Wigden had given me so many years before. Only now did I recognize the challenge I had presented the old man, and realize how wonderfully he had met it.
I seemed to be standing again in the little candy shop as I looked at the coins in my own hand. I understood the innocence of the two children and the power to preserve or destroy that innocence, as Mr. Wigden had understood those long years ago. I was so filled up with the remembering that my throat ached. The little girl was standing expectantly before me. “ Isn’t it enough?” she asked in a small voice.
“It’s a little too much,” I managed to say, somehow, over the lump in my throat. “You have some changeing.” I rummaged around in the cash drawer, dropped two pennies into her open hand, then stood in the doorway watching the children go down the walk carefully carrying their treasure.
When I turned back into the shop, my wife was standing on a stool with her arms submerged to the elbows in a tank where she was rearranging the plants. “Mind telling me what that was all about?” she asked. “ Do you know how many fish you just gave them?”
“ About 30 dollars’worth, ”I answered. “ But I couldn’t have done anything else. ”
When I’d finished telling her about old Mr. Wigdem her eyes were wet, and she stepped off the stool and gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek.
“ I still smell the gumdrops, ”I sighed, and I’m certain I heard old Mr. Wigden chuckle over my shoulder as I swabbed down the last tank.