Lila Parrish wrote
> One of our faculty asked me to find a short story he heard in a sermon
> 30 years ago. He thinks the title is "Turquoise Beads". It's about a
> poor little girl who buys turquoise beads for her mother. The shop
> owner sells them to her for the bit of money that she has. Her mother
> tries to return the gift thinking it was too expensive but the owner
> says the payment was enough.
I think this might be "String of Blue Beads"by Fulton Oursler.
http://www.hedgemom.net/id85.htm
A String of Blue Beads
by Fulton Oursler
Peter Richards was the loneliest man in town on the day Jean
Grace opened his door. You may have seen something in the newspapers about
the incident at the time it happened, although neither his name nor hers was
publicized, nor was the full story told as I tell it here.
Pete's shop had come down to him from his grandfather. The
little Christmas front window was strewn With a disarray of old-fashioned
things; bracelets and lockets worn in days before the Civil War; gold rings
and silver boxes; images of jade and ivory, porcelain figurines.
On this winter's afternoon a child was standing there, her
forehead against the glass, earnest and enormous eyes studying each
discarded treasure, as if she were looking for something quite special.
Finally, she straightened up with a satisfied air and entered the store.
The shadowy interior of Pete Richards' establishment was even
more cluttered than his show window. Shelves were stacked with jewel
caskets, dueling pistols, clocks, lamps, and the floor was heaped with
andirons and mandolins and things hard to find a name for. Behind the
counter stood Pete himself, a man not more than 30 but with hair already
turning gray. There was a bleak air about him as he looked at the small
customer who flattened her ungloved hands on the counter. "Mister," she
began, "would you please let me look at that string of blue beads in the
window?" Pete parted the draperies and lifted out a necklace.
The turquoise stones gleamed brightly against the pallor of his
palm, as he spread the ornament before her. "They're just perfect," said the
child, to herself. "Will you wrap them up pretty for me, please?" Pete
studied her with a stony air. "Are you buying these for someone?" "They're
for my big sister. She takes care of me. You see, this will be the first
Christmas since Mother died. I've been searching for the most wonderful
Christmas present for my sister." "How much money do you have?" asked Pete
warily. She had been busily untying the knots in a handkerchief and now she
poured out a handful of pennies on the counter. "I emptied my bank," she
explained simply. Pete Richards looked at her thoughtfully. Then he
carefully drew back the necklace.
The price tag was visible to him but not to her. How could he
tell her? The trusting look of her blue eyes smote him like the pain of an
old wound. "Just a minute," he said and turned toward the back of tile
store. Over his shoulder he called: "What's your name?" He was very busy
about something. "Jean Grace." When Pete returned to where Jean Grace
waited, a package lay in his hand, wrapped in scarlet paper and tied with a
bow of green ribbon. "There you are," he said shortly. "Don't lose it on the
way home." She smiled over her shoulder as she ran out the door. Through the
window he watched her go, while desolation flooded his thoughts. Something
about Jean Grace and her string of beads had stirred him to the depths of a
grief that would not stay buried.
The child's hair was wheat yellow, her eyes sea-blue, and once
upon a time not long before, Pete had been in love with a girl with hair of
that same yellow and with large eyes just as blue. And the turquoise
necklace was to have been hers. But there had come a rainy night--a truck
skidding on a slippery road--and the life was crushed out of his dream.
Since then, Pete Richards had lived too much with his grief in solitude. He
was politely attentive to customers, but after business hours his world
seemed irrevocably empty. He was trying to forget in a self-pitying haze
that deepened day by day.
The blue eyes of Jean Grace jolted him into acute remembrance of
what he had lost, The pain of it made him recoil from the exuberance of
holiday shoppers. During the next ten days trade was brisk; chattering women
swarming in, fingering trinkets, trying to bargain. When the last customer
had gone, late on Christmas Eve, he sighed with relief. It was over for
another year. But for Pete Richards the night was not quite over. The door
opened and a young woman hurried in. With an explicable start, he realized
that she looked familiar, yet he could not remember when or where he had
seen her before. Her hair was golden yellow and her large eyes were blue.
Without speaking, she drew from her purse a package loosely
unwrapped in its red paper a bow of green ribbon with it. Presently the
string of blue beads lay gleaming again before him. "Did this come from your
shop?" she asked. Pete raised his eyes to hers and answered softly: "Yes, it
did." "Are the stones real?" "Yes. Not the finest quality--but real." "Can
you remember who it was you sold them to?" "She was a small girl. Her name
was Jean. She bought them for her older sister's Christmas present." "How
much are they worth?" "The price," he told her solemnly, "is always a
confidential matter between the seller and the customer." "But Jean has
never had more than a few pennies of spending money. How could she pay for
them?" Pete was folding the gay paper into its creases, rewrapping the
little package just as neatly as before. "She paid the biggest price anyone
can ever pay," he said. "She gave all she had."
There was a silence then that filled the little curie shop. In
some faraway steeple, a bell began to ring.
The sound of the distant chiming, the little package lying on
the counter, the question in the eyes of the girl and the strange feeling of
renewal struggling unreasonable in the heart of the man, all had come to be
because of the life of a child. "But why did you do it?" He held out the
gift in his hand. "It's already Christmas morning," he said. "And it's my
misfortune that I have no one to give anything to. Will you let me see you
home and wish you a Merry Christmas at your door?" And so, to the sound of
many bells and in the midst of happy people, Pete Richards and a girl whose
name he had yet to learn, walked out into the beginning of the great day
that brings hope into the world for us all.
Daphne Drewello
Alfred Dickey Library
Jamestown, ND