Lena ran the coffee kiosk at Elm Street station, and she also sold umbrellas from a rack of eight beside the bench; she knew each of them by its color. On every rainy day, at about half past three, one umbrella vanished. The next dry morning it was back on its hook, folded, with a small note tied to the handle: "Borrowed with thanks."
After eleven rainy days Lena thought, "A thief with good manners!" She wanted to know who it was, so she tied a little brass bell to the handle of a bright pink umbrella. On the next rainy day, at half past three, the bell rang. Lena ran out of the kiosk and followed the sound across the road to the school gate.
There, under the pink umbrella, old Mr. Petrov, the retired stationmaster, was walking children without umbrellas from the school door to the bus, two at a time, back and forth in the rain. "I was stationmaster here for thirty-eight years," he said. "I cannot watch a child get wet near a station."
Lena could have called the police. She did not. The next day she hung a sign on the rack: "Free umbrellas. Bring back when dry." And she gave the pink umbrella with the bell to Mr. Petrov, so that she could hear him coming.
