II
They passed along Wedgwood Street, and Hilda preceded him into the chief poulterer-and-fishmonger's. Here was another slight grievance of Edwin's; for the chief poulterer-and-fishmonger's happened now to be the Clayhanger shop at the corner of Wedgwood Street and Duck Bank. Positively there had been competitors for the old location! Why should Hilda go there and drag him there? Could she not comprehend that he had a certain fine delicacy about entering? ... The place where the former sign had been was plainly visible on the brickwork above the shop-front. Rabbits, fowl, and a few brace of grouse hung in the right-hand window, from which most of the glass had been removed; and in the left, upon newly-embedded slabs of Sicilian marble, lay amid ice the curved forms of many fish, and behind them was the fat white-sleeved figure of the chief poulterer-and-fishmonger's wife with her great, wet hands. He was sad. He seriously thought yet again: "Things are not what they were in this town, somehow." For this place had once been a printer's; and he had a conviction that printing was an aristocrat among trades. Indeed, could printing and fishmongering be compared?
The saleswoman greeted them with deference, calling Edwin "sir," and yet with a certain complacent familiarity, as an occupant to ex-occupants. Edwin casually gave the short shake of the head which in the district may signify "Good-day," and turned, humming, to look at the hanging game. It seemed to him that he could only keep his dignity as a man of the world by looking at the grouse with a connoisseur's eye. Why didn't Hilda buy grouse? The shop was a poor little interior. It smelt ill. He wondered what the upper rooms were like, and what had happened to the decrepit building at the end of the yard. The saleswoman slapped the fish about on the marble, and running water could be heard.
"Edwin," said Hilda, with enchanting sweetness and simplicity, "would you like hake or turbot, dear?"
Impossible to divine from her voice that the ruin of their two favourite Orgreaves was complete, that she was conducting a secret correspondence, and that she had knowingly and deliberately offended her husband!
Both women waited, moveless, for the decision, as for an august decree.
When the transaction was finished, the saleswoman handed over the parcel into Hilda's gloved hands; it was a rough-and-ready parcel, not at all like the neat stiff paper-bag of the modern age.
"Very hot, isn't it, ma'am?" said the saleswoman.
And Hilda, utterly distinguished in gesture and tone, replied with calm, impartial urbanity:
"Very. Good afternoon."