A few of the junior members were under the impression that the words suggested liberal and cheerful hospitality; those who knew Mr. Richards better warned them not to expect too much from old T. R. T. R., they said, had never yet given away a ha’porth of anything, and acquaintance with human nature induced them to believe that he, at his age, was not likely to begin. The one person who had known T. R. the longest found herself swiftly disillusioned. Harriet was to live with her father over the shop in Hampstead Road, and to keep house for him; her wedding was to take place when Mr. Richards found it possible to make other arrangements, and not until then.
“I shall look after the shop,” he said commandingly. “That’s my part of the work. All you’ve got to do is to see to the cooking, and the cleaning up, the washing on Mondays, the ironing later on, the boots, the garden at the back, and so on and so forth. You sweep out the shop first thing in the morning, but apart from that, you’re not to show your face there. Understand?”
“Yes, father.”
“Don’t give me the trouble of speaking twice,” he went on in his official manner. “I’ve been used to managing much bigger affairs, without any trouble, and this will be mere child’s play. I look on it more as a hobby than anything else. Worst thing that can happen to a man of my industrious nature is to have nothing to occupy his mind. Go in now, and don’t you ever dare come out ’less I call you.”
The shop opened promptly on the first morning, Mr. Richards wearing a silk hat as he took down the shutters, to indicate that shirt-sleeves did not mean inferiority. He nodded distantly to his neighbours, and when they asked him a question concerning the weather of the day shook his head reservedly to convey the idea that he had not yet decided the point. Inside, he arranged the cash-drawer neatly and prepared change, blew a speck of dust from the counter, and, replacing the silk hat with a grey tweed cap, lighted a pipe and waited for the rush of custom. A drawback of official life had consisted in the fact that one could not be seen smoking within a certain distance of the terminus; it had been his duty on many occasions to reprove the staff for indulging in a pipe at the wrong moment, or at the inappropriate place; the match which he struck on the sole of his slippers made a bright flaming signal of the inauguration of liberty. During the morning Mr. Richards struck many matches and smoked several pipes, so that at one o’clock when his daughter called out respectfully, “Dinner’s ready, father!” his appetite was not so good as, at this hour, it should have been.
“What sort of a morning has it been, father?” asked Harriet, with deference.
“Mind your own business,” he retorted. “And pull the muslin curtain aside so that I can see when any one comes in. I’ve told you before the shop’s nothing to do with you.”
“There’s a lad rapping at the counter,” she remarked, disregarding his orders.
Mr. Richards upset his chair in the anxiety to attend to his first customer, and hurried in, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“How do?” said the lad familiarly. “How you getting on at your new job? Settling down all right?”