It was a queer little place, this general store—a compendium of grocery, drapery, confectionery, and half-a-dozen other trades. There were all sorts of things in the window, from rolls of cheap dress goods to home-made toffee; inside the shop itself, which was neither more nor less than the front room of a thatched cottage, there was a display of articles which was somewhat confusing to eyes not accustomed to such sights. It was said of a celebrated London tradesman that he could supply anything from a white elephant to a pin—Miss Partridge could hardly boast so much, but it was certain that she kept everything which the four hundred-odd souls of Orchardcroft required for their bodies—butcher's meat excepted. What was more, she knew where everything was, and could lay her hands on it at a moment's notice; what was still more, she was as polite in selling a little boy a new ready-made suit as in serving a ploughman with his Saturday ounce of shag or nail-rod tobacco. For that reason everybody liked her and brought their joys and sorrows to her.
On a bright spring afternoon, when the blackbirds and thrushes were piping gaily in her holly-hedged garden, Miss Partridge sat behind her counter knitting. She was then a woman of close upon sixty—a rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed woman, small in stature, grey of hair, out of whose face something of a benediction seemed always to shine upon everybody. She wore a plain black dress—nobody in Orchardcroft could remember Miss Partridge in anything but black for more than thirty years—over which was draped a real silk white shawl, fastened at the neck with a massive brooch of Whitby jet, and on her head was a smart cap in which were displayed several varieties of artificial flowers. Shawl and cap denoted that Miss Partridge was dressed for the day; in the morning less showy insignia were displayed.
"We're very quiet this afternoon, Martha Mary," observed Miss Partridge to her general factotum, who, having finished the housework, was now dusting the upper shelves. "There's been nobody in since old Isaac came for his tobacco."
"No, m'm," said Martha Mary, "but there's Jane Pockett coming up the garden just now."
"Then we shall hear something or other," said Miss Partridge, who knew Mrs. Pockett's characteristics; "Jane has always some news."
Mrs. Pockett, a tall, flabby lady, who acted a great part in the village drama of life, seeing that she saw all its new-comers into the world and all its out-goers leave its stage for ever, came heavily into the shop and dropped still more heavily into a chair by the counter. And without ceremony she turned a boiled-gooseberry eye on the little shopkeeper.
"Hev' yer heerd the noos?" she said.
"What news, Jane?" asked Miss Partridge.
Mrs. Pockett selected a mint humbug from a bottle on the counter and began to suck it.
"Well, of course, yer remember Robert Dicki'son, t' miller, at Stapleby yonder?" she said. "Him as died last year, leavin' a widder and two childer, a boy an' a girl?"