Things now were different. New Maxham, hardly a mile distant, possessed shops in plenty; but Old Maxham, though no longer a place of one shop, was still a primitive village, very much behind the age.
How much longer it could remain so was doubtful. Already lengthening arms of red houses in rows stretched affectionately outwards from the younger town, threatening by-and-by to engulf in their embrace the whole parent village. However, this consummation lay yet in the future; and the shop of Old Maxham, while partly supplanted by young aspirants, still held its own, as an institution venerable through antiquity and altogether reliable after generations of honesty.
It was only to be expected that, as the place grew, fresh shops should be started. Mr. Mokes was a reasonable man in most respects; and he viewed the question on the whole reasonably.
He did not expect his family—ancestors and descendants, inclusive of himself—to retain through ages a complete monopoly of Old Maxham trade. That a butcher should start his little shop was only to be looked for; he never had taken to that branch of trade, and people had gone to a neighbouring village or to New Maxham for their meat. A fishmonger was equally right; and a greengrocer, a small ironmonger, even a draper, came one and all in the natural course of events.
But when a man from New Maxham, Groates by name, chose to set up in the same street with himself a rival house to his own—a second "general," following in almost every respect his own particular lines, with the one exception of the Post-office—then Mr. Mokes, mild-tempered though he might be, did "turn" like the proverbial worm. He could not stand with patience such barefaced competition—grocery on one side and everything else on the other side; and outside shady seats among trees, with little tables for tea and fruit! The whole thing was a careful imitation, with improvements, which made the matter worse.
Flesh and blood could not be expected to endure such conduct. Mr. Mokes objected strongly, and his indignant dislike to the man extended to the man's whole family. When Groates was so impudent as to rent a pew in Church exactly in front of the Mokes' pew, Mr. Mokes actually quitted the pew of his forefathers, and went to another as far removed as possible.
By this means he lost one of his Sunday pleasures: the attentive perusal of a long and wordy inscription upon a certain stone slab, detailing all the virtues of his deceased Mokes' grandfather, who apparently had been a benefit to the neighbourhood, a blessing to his acquaintances, a model man, and an ideal tradesman. Mr. Mokes had always rejoiced in the reflected glory of that esteemed monument. But to sit and see just below it the row of Groateses, big and little, was too much for his equanimity. He couldn't do it, he avowed, and "feel like a Christian."
Of course Jessie Perkins knew all the ins and outs of Old Maxham society and politics. She had lived at Periwinkle Cottage ever since she became an orphan, at the age of four. Miss Perkins had adopted and brought her up. Miss Perkins was practically very good to Jessie, and no doubt was sincerely fond of her. Unhappily, the fondness was not apparent, and the goodness was far from attractive in its manifestations. And Jessie was not very fond of her aunt.
It was the same thing over again as with Jessie's father—Miss Perkins' only brother. Miss Perkins would have worked her fingers to the bone to serve him, but somehow she had not managed to keep his love. She had too many angles and corners, too testy and jealous a temper, to be lovable. Two or three friends or cronies she did possess, but then they had never lived under the same roof with Miss Perkins. There were many who pitied Jessie; and while she tried to be patient and dutiful to her aunt, her affections turned elsewhere.
Among the girl's oldest friends, after a sort, were the Mokeses opposite; among her newest were the Groateses, down the same main village street to the west.