Mrs. Day sighed despondently. "We can't cope with him," she said. "There is no good in trying."

"What do you intend to do then? Do you suppose families will buy their groshery" (he was always pronouncing it "groshery") "of you when they can buy it cheaper, a few shops farther down? Why should they, ma'am, come to think of it?"

"They won't, of course," Mrs. Day acquiesced, "but we may as well be ruined through lack of custom as through selling our goods for less than we give for them."

"I'll tell you what will ruin you," he said brusquely. "And that is lack of spunk." He derived a pleasure from the belief, apparently; he announced it with so much gusto. "In business you must not be a coward, ma'am. You must go for the man that's 'underselling' you, stand up to him, pay him out of his own coin."

Poor Mrs. Day heard him with a fainting spirit, dreary-eyed. What did she care for paying out Coman, down the street! Her heart was full of Bernard.

"Now look here, ma'am; re-dress your window. Where's your young man? Where's Pretty?" Pretty, who cordially loathed George Boult, reluctantly appeared. "Look here, young man; to-night, when you've up-shuttered, clear out half your window. Shove it full of the best sugar you've got. Put a card on it—one that'll shout at 'em as they pass. Letters that long, do you see, and black—black. 'Our three-ha'penny sugar. Comparisons invited.' Just that. See? And, look here again, ma'am, stick a ha'penny, or a penny a pound, on to your other goods, to make up. Understand?"

Mrs. Day faintly admitted that she understood.

"Oh, these things are easy enough to manage, get the hang of 'em. I don't object to this underselling on Coman's part. A little conflict in trade wakes interest, stirs us all up, customers and salesmen. We're too much inclined in Brockenham to go to sleep. We must wake up, Mrs. Day. That's our motter."

Then, with hardly a pause, and with no change of tone, he went on to the subject so near to her heart. "I have come in to speak to you, ma'am, about this boy of yours. He has conducted himself towards me with the basest ingratitude—but that we need not refer to, that don't matter, although I must say, considering what I have done for you all—"

Mrs. Day glanced towards Mr. Pretty, pricking his ears, and dismissed him to his task of grinding coffee in the cellar.