"Exactly so; and I'm like a giant refreshed with wine. And I should say you, in your quieter way, was up for anything also. For my part, even if all was suent and just so with the shop—which it is not—I'd be exceeding pleased to go back thereto, and feel myself in the heart of life and at the helm of my own ship again."
She raised a question, though she knew the answer.
"When you say things are not 'just so,' would you mean Jane, or Jeremy?"
"Jane's all right, as far as it's humanly possible with her growing family. Another coming in April I hear. But she does pretty well, though the stocks are far too low and, of course, she doesn't understand buying; but with regard to Jeremy, it's idle to pretend, and for that matter I won't pretend. He's letting it down—not out of malice, of course, but simply for the reason he lacks the needful qualities. Nobody ever had a better shop manner and a kinder heart, and nobody was ever more wishful to please his customers; but smiles and cheerful remarks about the weather don't take the place of the things people come into a shop to buy; and when a person hears that Jeremy's out of this, or out of that, or don't keep a thing in stock, it won't open the till for him to say the corn is coming on nice, or ask a woman how her baby is. When people want to buy needles, it ain't no manner of use telling them you've got a fine assortment of pins. Jeremy's all right, in a manner of speaking, so long as he's got a better to boss him. The spirit is willing, but the brain isn't built for all the work that must go on out of sight if a business is to pay. In a word he ought to be in somebody else's shop, not his own."
"He's going to let it down."
"He has let it down, and I tell you, when I run over the accounts and lend Jane a hand with the books, my heart bleeds. To see what we made so fine and four-square and the foremost affair in Brent going back, and to know Hasking, at the corner, and that little old maid with the Berlin wools and gim-cracks—Miss Moss I mean—to know such as them are lapping up custom and can find what Jeremy can't—it's a punishing thing. Very soon I shall keep out of the shop, or else my temper will suffer and I may say what I should be sorry to say."
"I know how you feel about it. My fingers itch every time I pass the window and I want to fly to the shelves when a customer comes in; but well I know that if I did, I'd find little but empty cardboards."
"And no law nor order," murmured Barlow. "Not a thing in its place and many a melancholy five minutes wasted in hunting for what ain't there to find. Last autumn a lot of holiday people were about and I've seen strangers come into the shop full of hope for some everyday thing—socks for their children or sunbonnets or elastic or what not; and then Jane and Jeremy would go pecking about, like a pair of birds in a strange field, and hope would fade off the faces of the visitors, and they'd just creep out. And very possibly, ten minutes after they were gone, what they wanted would be found."
"An unexpected chastening for us," said Judith.
"I know you find it so," he answered, "but what I feel is that the situation may not be past praying for; and that brings me to the tremendous idea that's taking shape in my mind. It came over me like a flame of fire last time I was with the Chosen Few. I thought of what used to be, and my manhood rebelled, and a voice seemed to say, 'It's not too late—it's not too late.'"