"La bless you!" she kindly said, "it'll never do. I said so from the first, and I say so the last, it'll never do!"
"Oh, yes it will!" grimly observed Jane; "it will do for Mr. Jones, Mrs.
Brown."
"I hope not, Jane," said Rachel, gravely; "and I would rather," she added, with some firmness, and venturing for once on a reproof, "I would rather you did not think so much of what evil may happen to others. Sufficient to any of us is it to look forward to our own share of evil days."
She raised her voice as she began; but it sank low ere she concluded. Surprised at herself for having said so much, she did not look round, but resumed her work, a moment interrupted. The room remained deeply silent Jane was crimson. For once, Mrs. Gray thought her daughter had spoken sensibly; and for once, Mrs. Brown found nothing to say.
CHAPTER X.
A week had passed over the Teapot, and, sitting in the back-parlour with Mary, who was busy sewing, Richard Jones dived deep into his books, and cast up his accounts. He allowed for rent, for expenditure, for household, for extras, then his face, brimful of ill-disguised exultation, he said to his daughter: "Well, Mary, dear, 'taint much to boast of, but for a first week, you see, 'taint amiss, either. I find, all expenses covered, one pound ten net profit. Now, you know, that makes, first, fifty-two pound a-year; then half of fifty-two, twenty-six; add twenty-six to fifty-two, seventy-eight—seventy-eight pound a-year, net-profit. Well, it stands to reason and common sense, that as I go on, my business will go on improving too; in short, put it at the lowest—I hate exaggeration—well put it at the lowest, and I may say that by next Michaelmas, we shall have a neat hundred."
"Law! father, can't you say a hundred and fifty at once," peevishly interrupted Mary.
Mary's will was law.
"Well, I really think I can say a hundred and fifty," ingenuously replied Richard Jones, "now, with a hundred and fifty pound for the first year, and just five per cent, as increase of profit for the second."
"I'm sure it'll be ten per cent," again interrupted Mary, who, from hearing her father, had caught up some of the money terms of this money-making world.