"'Best quality, one and a penny.' I see it ticketed up as I come by Coman's." She turned round to the mistress of the shop. "I have always dealt along of you for butter, ma'am," she said. "I haven't no wish to leave you, but where I buy my butter—stand to reason I must buy the rest of my grosheries."
"If Coman is down to that; you shall have it for the same sum;" Mrs. Day promised. Her butter had already been "dropped" twice before, that day, in order to keep pace with the passion for underselling of the new grocer, who had, for the undoing of the widow and the orphan, opened a shop lower down the street. Our poor retailer was selling her sugars, too, for less than she gave for them.
"You must do so for a time," George Boult had informed her. "Coman can't go on like this for ever. He'll get tired of the game soon—if I know anything of trade and tradesmen—then you can stick it on to your goods again."
While the subject of the butter was being debated, the child Franky came in from afternoon school. He was day-boarder at a cheap academy to which other small tradesmen's sons were sent—a school very inferior to that to which Bernard had gone. Companionship with rough, common children had not improved the manners of Franky, nor his habit of speech. He dashed in, with no thought of the deference due to customers, pushed out of his way the lady just deciding to let Mrs. Day try to procure in the town a candle more to her taste, rushed round the counter to his mother.
"C'n I go in to tea with Willy Spratt? Willy Spratt's ma says I may go to tea with 'm. I wish to, very much. C'n I go?"
"No, my dear. We like you to have tea with us. We can't spare you."
"C'n I go, ma? C'n I go? Willy Spratt's waitin' outside."
Willy Spratt was the son of the cutler and his wife, across the way. Very good customers of Mrs. Day, very good people; but—
"You haven't spoken to Mrs. Potter, Franky," Deleah said to divert the child's mind. "You know Mrs. Potter, sir. Where are your manners?"
"Quite 'ell, I thank ye," said Franky without a glance in the direction of the good lady in question, who had not the intention to inquire for his health. "C'n I go, ma? Willy's waitin' outside; and c'n I go?"