Gabby and the Gobsmackers

Cool cash for a baker's daughter

Gabby was a little girl of seven years who lived in a small but comfortable cottage situated at the end of the village of Octavia, just about the area where the village's sole road ended, and the Willowy Woods began. She lived her with her Aunt Esperanza (who everyone called Espie) and her dog Booger.  

Gabby's mother died when she was just three, but her mother's sister Espie stepped up, took her in, and raised her own. Espie never married, as she was utterly devoted to Gabby and had no time for to bother with courtship rituals. This suited Espie fine, as she was the quiet type who preferred solitude, and preferred to be alone with Gabby. Her lhasa apso pup Booger rounded up the little family. Essie, Gabby, and Booger were fine with the arrangement and were quite content. 

Espie learned baking from her mother and made a decent living running a bakery from her cottage. She baked fudge brownies and loaves of bread mainly, which were quite popular with the villagers and provided Espie and Gabby with a fair income. Villagers would come around the cottage in the morning to buy their morning bread, and the smell of the newly baked loaves would waft around the cottage and made it as far as the village square, attracting hungry customers who would line up outside the cottage, awaiting their buns and loaves for the day.

Gabby would help Espie at the cash register. Even as a little girl, she had the quite the mind for money and business, and could work the register with all the finesse of a pro. Espie would pay Gabby a commission of 1% of the day's sales, so even as a little girl, Gabby was able to save up quite a bit of money.

One fine day, she was counting the cash in her piggy bank and decided she had made enough money to go shopping in the next town, Septoonville, which had just opened a big department store. There was a fine doll house that Gabby was eyeing. Every day she would go online and gaze at the laptop's screen, coveting the dollhouse from the electronic image that shone at her from her laptop's screen. The Septoonville department store's website had a prominent slot in her browser's bookmarks.

"Someday you will be mine," she would say, to no one in particular. 

Maybe one day, she said it just a little too loudly, so someone might have heard her.