By midmorning the xylophone shop had a line that did not hurry. Each wooden bar arrived with a pillow no larger than a postage stamp, and the shopkeeper would not let a mallet near until the greeting was finished.
"They like a small rest before they speak," she told us, folding another pillow into a square. "If you tap too soon, they only blush. If you wait for the nod, you get one clean note, and that is plenty for a Tuesday."
We asked at the kiosk on the corner. A boy with a paper bag of apples said the C bar had taken the longest, because it wanted to say hello to the mallet and also to the tune waiting in the air. A woman with a shopping basket wrote in the shop notebook: Heard one G. Thank you. Will return when F has had its nap.
By evening a sparrow sat on the windowsill and tilted its head after each note, as if keeping score. The shopkeeper dimmed the lamp and left the pillows in a tidy row. Tomorrow, she said, the bars would wake in the same order, and nobody would be asked to play twice.