We temporised with Mr Griffiths and proceeded to the chemist’s, noticing as we did so a determination of the inhabitants of Welshpool to their shop doors, while the loafers round the stone pedestal of the gas lamp that seems to form the focus of Welshpool life, turned to look after us like sunflowers to the sun. Further away than ever went the memory of the thud of ‘bus-horses’ feet on wood pavement, the hot glitter of harness and livery buttons at Hyde Park Corner, the precarious dive across Piccadilly, and all the other environments of yesterday. The heat of noon lay here like a spell on the street, and Welshpool, for the most part, sat in its shady back parlours in comfortable lethargy.
Like the other shops, Mr Williams, the chemist’s, was cool and empty, with the air of a place where it is always dinner-hour hanging drowsily over it. Indeed, the pimpled cheek of the apprentice—why are pimples the common wear of chemists’ assistants?—was still inflated by a mouthful when he made his appearance, and a sound as of dumpling impeded the voice in which he told us that Mr Williams had a pony, and that the mistress would speak to us herself.
“Mr Williams was away,” explained Mrs Williams, “drawing teeth and measuring for new ones; and y’know what a job that is,” she concluded, examining Miss O’Flannigan’s smile with the eye of a connoisseur. Miss O’Flannigan relapsed somewhat abruptly into gloom.
She sat on the top of an “Empress” cottage stove.
The obliging ironmonger.