Sally wants to buy a house.  She saves very hard and after 3 years, she has enough money to buy a very small house.  She is very excited.

But now Sally has a big problem. She has a house but it is empty. She needs furniture but she has very little money.

Her mother gives her a bed, a table and a chair.  Her grandmother gives her some plates and pots and glasses.

Sally can live in her house but she wants many more things. On weekends she drives around all the towns near her house. She looks in secondhand shops.  One Saturday afternoon, she finds a secondhand shop in a small village. She looks in the window.

Everything in the shop is very dusty and dirty. But Sally thinks she will go inside.  There is no one in the shop. She looks around. She sees a mirror in a corner of the shop. It is big and old. I need a mirror, thinks Sally.  I will look at it.

She walks over to the mirror.  It is so dirty she can’t see the glass.  Sally takes some tissues from her bag. She starts to clean the glass.

“I’ll clean it for you.” Sally jumps. She turns around. There is a man standing behind her. He is very small. He is very old. He is wearing a black suit.

“Thank you,” says Sally. “Are you the owner of this shop? ”

The man doesn’t answer. He goes away and comes back with a cloth and some water. He cleans the glass.

“Now you can look at yourself in the mirror,” says the old man.

Sally stands next to the old man. She looks at the mirror. She looks at the old man standing next to her.

Sally is very shocked. She can see herself in the mirror, but she can’t see the old man.

“But! But!” says Sally.

The old man smiles. “It is a very special mirror,” he says. “And it is cheap.”

“It is very nice, but I have changed my mind. I don’t want to buy it.”

Sally runs from the shop. She runs to her car and gets in. She drives away very fast.

It is a very nice mirror, thinks Sally. But either the old man is very strange or the mirror is very strange.  Maybe I will save some more money and go to a department store and buy a nice new mirror!