“Nine for sixpence,” is Benson’s desperate [p12] challenge,—the cakes of course shrinking somewhat in size.
The baker does not live who can afford to give ten for sixpence.
Benson has now to create new signs. “No second-class flour used in the cakes of this establishment,” is one of his efforts.
Dunks caps it.
“No miserable counting out of currants in cakes baked here. Visitors are invited to sample.” And on his counter is a very fruity specimen cut across. As a result of this competition “the strangers” may count on quite respectable cakes for their tea.
There are two grocers—brothers, oddly enough, though not connected in trade; steady, peaceable old men with whom brotherly love continues despite trade rivalry.
But they possess a live young assistant each, and it is war to the knife between these lads.
They fall on the startled stranger before he is fairly out of the train and thrust before him the merits of their respective establishments.
Howie, the boy of Septimus Smith, is lean and lanky and can stretch a long arm and a trade card for an amazing distance to just beneath your nose. But Larkin is small and wiry and has a knack of squeezing himself right into the midst of your mountain of [p13] luggage and children and porters, and earnestly informing you that Octavius Smith keeps the best bacon in the district, and promising you that if you deal with him, he, Larkin, will bring your letters with him from the post office every morning when he calls for orders.
It is said that the loser invariably fights the winner after these contests unless there falls to his lot another passenger by the same train. But if it happens that the luck is to neither,—that is, if all are hotel or boarding-house visitors, or (an unforgivable thing in the eyes of both) if the newcomers are people who bring their own groceries from the metropolis, then the two go off almost friends and help each other up with any boxes the train may have brought for them.