His sharp, grey eyes shot a glance up at her, and the mother instinctively felt that here was a will that had escaped from her hands.
This was something that had never entered into her plans.
In order to remove her dissatisfaction, he let her have his thirty dollars before she went.
There is a branch of trade in the narrow streets and outskirts, whose position is one storey higher than the stall-woman. It sells its wares from a house, comprises, according to legislation, a great many more effects, and allows the individual concerned to lead a more comfortable existence, with a step farther from hand to mouth; that is to say, it gains, instead of a day's credit or a weekly settlement, a week's credit or a monthly settlement.
It was in this small trade that Barbara wanted to start, and if it can be said of America that whole towns and undertakings arise in a moment of time, something of the same kind might well be said of Barbara's shop.
Barely a week later she was in her house, and had in the window an exhibition of balls of cotton, bread, twists, sweets, stay-laces, needle-cases, snuff, clay pipes, steel pens, matches, etc., etc., while she herself sat behind the counter—which was a packing-case disguised under some print—and ground coffee, which she roasted in the kitchen beyond. In a drawer that would lock, which Nikolai had overlooked, stood the cigar-box that did duty as a cash-box, with a few coppers in it.
The acquaintance between Mrs. Holman and Barbara, too, was already renewed, with the secret about Silla preserved on Barbara's side.
Mrs. Holman—she lived only in the street below—had come up, while Barbara was standing on her steps in the evening, to look at her new surroundings by the light of the just completed shop-window. And then she must not pass an old acquaintance's door. She must come in and have a cup of coffee—it was standing clearing on the hob, if she would condescend.
Mrs. Holman might very well have had her own opinion about a good deal that she saw in there, but she preferred, while she drank her coffee, to give Barbara some idea of the series of dispensations which she had passed through since Holman died.
"Oh no, don't turn your cup up yet! One more, Mrs. Holman."