"Oh!"
The genial May sunshine flashed gaily, lighting up the whole street, making both ladies blink their eyes as the carriage rolled away.
"What a crowd there is outside Bence's," said Miss Enid. "How mean it is of him not to close!"
The first shop they passed was Bence's drapery stores, and Mrs. Thompson glanced carelessly at the thronged pavement in front of these improperly open windows.
"Mr. Bence's motto," said Mrs. Thompson, "is cheap and nasty," and she laughed with an amused scorn for so mean a trade rival. "His method of doing business is like the trumpery he offers to the public. I have a rather impudent letter from him in my pocket now, and I want—"
But then Mrs. Thompson's strong eyebrows contracted, and she shrugged her shoulders and looked away from Bence's. She had just noticed two of her own shop-girls going into Bence's to buy his trumpery. Something distinctly irritating in the thought that these feather-headed girls regularly carried half their wages across the road to Bence's!
Throughout the length of High Street there were too many of such signs of the vulgar times: the ever-changing trade, old shops giving place to new ones—an American boot-shop, a branch of the famous cash tobacconists, the nasty cheap restaurant opened by the great London caterers, Parisian jewellery absorbing one window of the historic clocksmiths,—everywhere indications of that love of tawdriness and glitter which slowly atrophies the sense of solid worth, of genuineness and durability.
Yet everywhere, also, signs of the old life of the town still vigorous—aldermen and councillors taking the air; Mr. Wiseman, the wealthy corn-merchant; Mr. Dempsey, the auctioneer-mayor; Mr. Young, owner of a hundred horses besides this pair of gallant greys that were drawing Mrs. Thompson.
Everyone of the solid old townsfolk knew her; all that was respectably permanent bowed and smiled at her. The drive was like a royal progress when they swept through the market square, past the ancient town hall now a museum, under the shadows thrown by the new municipal buildings, and the other and bigger church of Holy Trinity, out beneath the noble gatehouse, and up into the sunlit slope of Hill Street. Hats off on either side, broad masculine faces smiling in the sunlight. All the best of the town knew her and was proud of her.