It is clear that this short story is a "coming of age" story where the narrator is a tender adolescent boy who is completely overcome by his Romantic ideas of love. These certainly come to focus on Mangan's sister. Note how she is described from the point of view of the narrator:
She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door... Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.
Note how in this description the light that surrounds her gives her an almost angelic appearance - it is as if she has a halo. This Romantic obsession the narrator has with Mangan's sister (note how she is never named - this itself seems to show the foolishness of the narrator's feelings) clearly dominates him, as he himself expresses later on in the short story:
But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
This sets the stage for Mangan's sister's appeal to the narrator to buy something for her, clearly placing him in the role of knight errand off to complete a dangerous quest on behalf of his beautiful lady who awaits his safe return. It is this that sets the narrator up for his epiphany at the end of the story and makes him realise his own vanity.
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