smallhobbit

Violet Buckle looked at her neighbour and replied, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t.  Reggie knows where he’s going and which bus to catch back.”

“I just think it’s rather irresponsible, you know.”

“It would be far more irresponsible if I left him in charge of the shop while I ran the errand.”

Having waved to Reggie as the bus pulled away, Violet turned on her heel and walked briskly back to the shop.

Despite her words, Violet spent the next hour thinking about Reggie.  Normally, she would have asked Fred to go for her, but he’d had an urgent job that morning and couldn’t go, and she needed the material by lunchtime, so it was either shut the shop or let Reggie go.  It wasn’t as if it was difficult – they had done the journey several times together, and she’d made him repeat the instructions carefully to her before she’d let him go.

Violet looked at the clock and began to worry, which was ridiculous.  He wouldn’t have been back yet, even if he’d gone straight into the shop, collected the parcel and caught a bus immediately.  But what if the bus hadn’t come, or he’d got on the wrong one?  Of course he knew the number, and always told her when it was their bus when they were out together.  She’d given him the exact fare to give to the conductor, but what if he’d dropped one of the coins and the conductor had made him get off the bus at an earlier stop?  Perhaps she shouldn’t have let him go after all.

Telling herself not to worry, she bent down to organise the contents of a couple of the drawers below the counter.  The bell on the shop door jangled and Violet looked up, ready to welcome her next customer.

She saw Reggie in the doorway, a beaming smile on his face. 

“I did it, Mum,” he said.  “All by myself.”

Violet decided it had been worth all the worry to see Reggie’s obvious pleasure at achieving something which most people took for granted they could do, and equally assumed Reggie would never be capable of doing.