Lena ran the coffee kiosk at Elm Street station, and she also sold umbrellas from a rack of eight beside the bench, which she counted every evening the way some people count sheep. On rainy days the station smelled of wet wool and hot coffee. 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 had met many kinds of people over her counter, but never that kind, and 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, a little embarrassed, holding the umbrella high over a girl whose school bag was bigger than she was. "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.
