Mrs. Day asked for a quarter of a pound of tea, and while he served her looked about at the dark little dirty shop with its mingled odours.
When she left the establishment of Jonas Carr her spirits had risen. The whole thing was ludicrous. Imagine the name of Lydia Day, "licensed to sell tobacco and snuff," painted over the door! Imagine her—her!—behind the counter of that squalid little shop! Imagine Bessie, and her exquisite young Deleah passing their lives in that upper room behind the net curtains! It was ridiculous, grotesque, impossible, and could not be.
But she was to find with astonishingly small waste of time that it could be.
And it was.
CHAPTER X
Exiles From Life's Revels
For the first year that Mrs. Day waited behind the counter of the Bridge Street shop more trade was done there than in the most prosperous period of old Jonas Carr's tenancy. Quite half the ladies of Brockenham left their particular grocers to bestow their custom on the widow. From kindness of heart, from curiosity, from the impulse to do as others were doing, people flocked to purchase their tea and sugar of Lydia Day, licensed also to supply them, if desired, with tobacco and snuff. George Boult's prognostications of the success of the venture seemed to be more than fulfilled.
Bessie stoutly refusing to go into the shop—it took more than George Boult to manage Bessie!—he was constrained to sanction the engaging of a youth to assist behind the counter. Mr. Pretty, therefore—he was called "Mr." for business purposes, his tender years hardly entitling him to the designation—and a boy to go errands, composed the staff.
From eight in the morning till eight at night the shop was open; and even when it was supposed to be closed, Mrs. Day could not enjoy an undisturbed rest with her daughters and Franky in their upstairs sitting-room. For the neighbouring tradesmen, all of whom had stretched out friendly hands to the poor lady so unwillingly becoming one of them, had the bad habit of forgetting to make their purchases till after shop hours, when they would send their maids-of-all-work to the private door for the supper cheese, or the breakfast coffee they had too late discovered they were "out of."
Bessie and Deleah fought against the humouring of these out-of-season customers. Often they attempted to hold their tired mother forcibly in her chair when she would arise to go to them. "Let people get their goods at regulation hours, or refuse to serve them," said the Manchester man, now an inmate of the Day household. But when the grievance was put before George Boult he was of a different opinion.