She tried to obtain information on this interesting point, but failed completely. Suspense is worse than the worst reality. Richard Jones lost appetite and sleep. Slumber, when it came, was accompanied by such fearful nightmare, that waking thoughts, though bitter, were not, at least, so terrible. He could not forget the opposite shop; in the first place, because he saw it every morning with his bodily eyes; in the second, because it ever haunted that inward eye called by Wordsworth 'the bliss of solitude.' How far it proved a bliss to Richard Jones, the reader may imagine.
All this time the shop had been progressing, and now bricklayer, carpenter, glazier, and decorator haying done their work, it was completed and ready for its tenant, who, however, seemed in no hurry to appear. This proved the worst time for Richard Jones. To look at that shop all the day long, and not to be able to make anything of it; to wonder whether it were a friend or an enemy; whether it would give new lustre to the street on which he had cast his fortunes, or blast those fortunes in their very birth, was surely no ordinary trial. Well might he grow thin, haggard, and worn.
At length, the crisis came. At the close of November, a dread rumour reached his ears. The shop was to be a grocer's shop, and it was to open a week before Christmas.
That same evening, Mary came home crying, and much agitated. Mrs. Brown, with her usual kindness, had given information.
"Oh, father!" she exclaimed, "Mrs. Brown says it's to be a grocer's shop."
"So I have heard to-day," he replied, a little gloomily. "Never mind, child," he added, attempting to cheer up, and a rueful attempt it turned out, "never mind, I dare-say there's room for two."
He said it, but he knew it was not true; he knew there was room but for one, and that if two came, why, either both must perish after a fierce contest, or one survive and triumph over the ruin of the other's all. He knew it, and groaned at the thought.
"I wish you wouldn't father," said Mary, again beginning to cry.
"Mary, my pet, I can't help it," said Jones, fairly giving way to feelings too long repressed; "there aint room for two, that's the plain truth of it, and if another grocer comes, why, he must ruin me, or I must ruin him; and that aint pleasant to think of, is it?"
Mary was not without spirit.