"Well, father, and how's this week?" asked Mary.
Jones rubbed his chin, and looked at her fairly perplexed—his wit was none of the brightest—as to how he might best elude the question.
"How's this week," he echoed; "well, this week is like last week to be sure. I wonder how that fellow Saunders is a getting on."
"Law! father, don't mind him," said Mary. "He's low, that's what he is— he's low."
Impossible for us to translate the scorn with which Miss Mary Jones spoke. It impressed her father. "Spirited little thing," he thought, and he drew her fondly towards him, and kissed her, and Mary fortunately forgot her question.
Week after week passed, and what had been a speck on the horizon, became a dark and threatening cloud. Richard Jones could not shut his eyes to the truth that his customers were deserting him. Even Mary perceived it, and spoke uneasily on the subject, of which her father at once made light.
"It's business, child," he said, "and business is all ups and downs; I have had the ups, and the downs I must have." Spite this philosophic reflection, Mr. Jones could not help thinking he had rather more than his share of the downs. He was embittered, too, by daily perceiving the defection of some staunch customer. That lady in the large, shabby, black straw bonnet, who had so spiritedly told "The two Teapots" to flare away on the day of its opening, was one of the first who forsook the "Teapot" for its rival. Many followed her perfidious example; but Mr. Jones did not feel fairly cut up, until he one evening distinctly saw Rachel Gray walk out of the opposite shop. The stab of Brutus was nothing to Caesar in comparison with this blow to Richard Jones.
And he was thinking it over the next morning, and stood behind his counter breaking sugar rather gloomily, when Rachel herself appeared. Mr. Jones received her very coldly.
She asked for a pound of sugar.
"And no tea?" he said, pointedly.