"Think of the forced companionship with those he must associate with!"
"When he could pick his companions he chose the worst he could find. He's amongst a rougher crew now, but a far and away better one for him."
The tears were running down Mrs. Day's cheeks. She wiped them away furtively with her hand, but he saw them. Saw, and resented them with the impatient sense of injury a woman's tears arouse in that order of man. He turned his back upon her, and began fingering the lemons displayed in a box on the other counter.
"Think over what I've said, ma'am. Words of wisdom you've heard, and every one of 'em for your good. And see that your young man carries out my suggestion for the window to-morrow, will you? Miss Bessie upstairs?"
Mrs. Day, staring into the street through her tears, said she believed her daughter was in the sitting-room.
"I'll just run up and pay my respects to Miss Bessie, then."
He had adopted the habit, of late, of going up to pay his respects in that quarter after every business interview in the shop. Bessie pretended to look upon the predilection for her society as presumption on George Boult's part.
"A man as old as my own father!" she often said to Emily, with whom she had many confidences.
"All the more reason for him to come fascinatin' round you," Emily declared.
How this ill-favoured, more than middle-aged spinster came to be an authority on affairs of the heart she would have found it difficult to explain; but she had ever an opinion to offer on such matters, and she gave it with a weightiness and a conclusiveness which rendered it final.