Small Business Sales: 20 Foundations Every Owner Should Know

The stationer’s shop on the square smelled of ink and cedar, and on the Thursday after the workshop Doctor Owl had been standing at its counter for twenty-five minutes, holding two sample cards up to the window, one in each wing.

They were business cards. His own were four years old and he had decided, in the night, that they were no longer right, though he could not have said what was wrong with them. The first sample was set in a plain serif face. The second was set in the same face, very slightly narrower. He turned them over. He turned them back. The stationer, a small, patient mouse with ink to her elbows, had stopped offering opinions at about the fifteenth minute and was sorting nibs.

“The second one has more air in it,” he said.

“It does,” said the stationer.

“The first has more weight.”

“It does.”

“I cannot decide whether I want to be heavy or airy.”

“Doctor Owl,” said the stationer, kindly, “you are an owl.”

He put both cards down, and was about to pick them up again when the door opened behind him and let in the smell of the square and a rustle of birch bark, and a squirrel with mismatched acorn earrings went past his elbow to the next counter, and said, quietly, “Forty, please. Blank.”

He knew it was Hazel before he turned. She had a basket on her arm, and in the basket was a bark roll, and on the counter she set down a small flat case, and opened it, and took out a sheet of tracing paper covered in drawings no bigger than a thumbnail.

“Blank,” said the stationer. “Cream stock? No printing on the front?”

“No printing at all. Just a little room on the back.” Hazel slid the tracing sheet across. “I’m going to draw on the front. One each. This is the heron’s dock at dawn, for the family from Gull Point. This is the mill bridge, for the badger’s cousin. The ridge for the ranchers.” She slid them out one at a time, and each one, in three lines, was exactly the painting that creature had asked for, and Doctor Owl, from the next counter, with a business card in each wing, saw the stationer look at the drawings and put down her nibs. “Forty names. Forty cards. I’m going to take them round by hand.”

“And the back?”

“I’ll write a note.” Hazel hesitated. “Something friendly. I’ve been thinking about your painting. That sort of thing.”

“With the price?” said the stationer, as she would have asked about the weather.

Hazel’s paw stopped on the tracing sheet.

“I’ll see what happens,” she said.

The stationer wrote 40, cream, blank on a slip and said they would be ready Monday. Hazel paid, exactly, in coins counted twice. Then she turned around, and saw the owl, and the two cards, and went the color of a strawberry under her fur.

“Doctor Owl. I didn’t see you.”

“I am choosing a font.”

“It’s going well?”

“It is not.” He set down both cards. “Hazel. May I ask what you are going to write on the back?”

“Something friendly.”

“And where in it is the number?”

She looked at the case, and at the stationer, who was suddenly very busy with the nibs, and then at him. She did not answer, and it was the longest she had gone without answering anything since the day he had met her.