“Fifteen hundred and fifty is bid,” the auctioneer informed the company, electrifying the waiter once more. And when he had sipped he said, with feigned sadness: “Come, gentlemen, you surely don’t mean to let this magnificent lot go for fifteen hundred and fifty pounds?”
But they did mean that.
The hammer fell, and the auctioneer’s clerk and the solicitor’s clerk took Mr. Critchlow aside and wrote with him.
Nobody was surprised when Mr. Critchlow bought Lot No. 2, his own shop.
Constance whispered then to Cyril that she wished to leave. They left, with unnatural precautions, but instantly regained their natural demeanour in the dark street.
“Well, I never! Well, I never!” she murmured outside, astonished and disturbed.
She hated the prospect of Mr. Critchlow as a landlord. And yet she could not persuade herself to leave the place, in spite of decisions.
The sale demonstrated that football had not entirely undermined the commercial basis of society in Bursley; only two Lots had to be withdrawn.
II
On Thursday afternoon of the same week the youth whom Constance had ended by hiring for the manipulation of shutters and other jobs unsuitable for fragile women, was closing the shop. The clock had struck two. All the shutters were up except the last one, in the midst of the doorway. Miss Insull and her mistress were walking about the darkened interior, putting dust-sheets well over the edges of exposed goods; the other assistants had just left. The bull-terrier had wandered into the shop as he almost invariably did at closing time—for he slept there, an efficient guard—and had lain down by the dying stove; though not venerable, he was stiffening into age.