Mrs. Thompson: A Novel

by W. B. Maxwell

"Speak for yourself."

"Well, say I'm as bad as you. We're all a lot of fools together."

Of course there must be talk. The Napoleonic rise of this fortunate shopman had been sufficiently rapid to stir the whole of his little shop-world. Starting thus, to what heights might he not attain in Thompson's? There would be talk and more talk.

But not within the hearing of Mr. Mears.

"Jabber, jabber," said Mr. Mears with unusual severity. "Less of it. You're like so many cackling hens in some back yard—instead of ladies who know how to behave themselves in a high-class emporium."

Evidently Mr. Mears was not pleased with the appointment. He stamped off; and the girls observed the characteristic swish of the coat tails, the manner in which he puffed out his chest, and the faint flush upon his bearded face.

Meanwhile Mrs. Thompson had passed onward and upward, through many departments, to the door of communication on the first floor that led from her public shop to her private house.

Outwardly it was quite an old-fashioned shop, still encased with the red-brick fabric of Georgian days; but inwardly its structure had been almost entirely modernised. The bird-cage art of steel-girdering had swept away division-walls, opened out the department to the widest possible extent and given an unimpeded run of floor area where once the goods used to be stored in rooms the size of pigeon-holes. The best shop-architects had gutted the place, and, so far as they were permitted, had "brought it up to date"; but in all recent improvements the style of substantial, respectable grandeur was preserved. The new mahogany staircases were of a Georgian pattern; there were no fantastic white panellings, no coloured mosaics, no etagères of artificial flowers. Really the vast looking-glasses were the only decoration that one could condemn as altogether belonging to the vulgar new school. The mirrors were perhaps overdone.

So, as Mrs. Thompson ascended the short flight of stairs out of Bedding, Etc., a pleasant, middle-aged woman in stately black with pendent chatelaine, climbed opposing steps to meet her face to face on the landing. As she moved on she was moving in many glasses, so that nearly all the assistants could see her or her reflected image: a procession of Mrs. Thompsons advancing from Woollens and Yarns, another converging column of Mrs. Thompsons from Cretonnes and Chintzes, reinforcements coming forward in the big glass opposite the entrance of Household Linen; while the young men behind the Blankets counter raised their eyes to watch the real Mrs. Thompson march by with a company of false Mrs. Thompsons stretching in perfect line from the right—innumerable Mrs. Thompsons shown by the glasses; some looking bigger, some looking slighter; but all the glasses showing a large-bosomed, broad-hipped woman of forty-five, with florid colouring and robust deportment; a valiant solid creature seeming, as indeed she was, well able to carry the burden of the whole shop on her firm shoulders.