Bradford and Son (late Joshua Grice), Linendrapers, Hosiers, &c., &c.
The board on which these words were traced was continued over the smaller shop, where it was additionally superscribed thus:—
Mrs. Bradford (late Joanna Grice), Milliner and Dressmaker.
Regardless of rain, and droppings from eaves that trickled heavily down his hat and coat, Mat stood motionless, reading and re-reading these inscriptions from the opposite side of the way. Though the whole man, from top to toe, was the very impersonation of firmness, he nevertheless hesitated most unnaturally now. At one moment he seemed to be on the point of entering the shop before him—at another, he turned half round towards the churchyard which he had left behind him. At last he decided to go back to the churchyard, and retraced his steps accordingly.
He entered quickly by the gate at which he had delayed before; and pursued the path among the graves a little way. Then striking off over the grass, after a moment’s consideration and looking about him, he wound his course hither and thither among the turf mounds, and stopped suddenly at a plain flat tombstone, raised horizontally above the earth by a foot or so of brickwork. Bending down over it, he read the characters engraven on the slab.
There were four inscriptions, all of the simplest and shortest kind, comprising nothing but a record of the names, ages, and birth and death dates of the dead who lay beneath. The first two inscriptions notified the deaths of children:—“Joshua Grice, son of Joshua and Susan Grice, of this parish, aged four years;” and “Susan Grice, daughter of the above, aged thirteen years.” The next death recorded was the mother’s: and the last was the father’s, at the age of sixty-two. Below this followed a quotation from the New Testament:—Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. It was on these lines, and on the record above them of the death of Joshua Grice the elder, that the eyes of the lonely reader rested longest; his lips murmuring several times, as he looked down on the letters:—“He lived to be an old man—he lived to be an old man after all!”
There was sufficient vacant space left towards the bottom of the tombstone for two or three more inscriptions; and it appeared as if Mat expected to have seen more. He looked intently at the vacant space, and measured it roughly with his fingers, comparing it with the space above, which was occupied by letters. “Not there, at any rate!” he said to himself, as he left the churchyard, and walked back to the town.
This time he entered the double shop—the hosiery division of it—without hesitation. No one was there, but the young man who served behind the counter. And right glad the young man looked, having been long left without a soul to speak to on that rainy morning, to see some one—even a stranger with an amazing skull-cap under his hat—enter the shop at last.
What could he serve the gentleman with? The gentleman had not come to buy. He only desired to know whether Joanna Grice, who used to keep the dressmaker’s shop, was still living?
Still living, certainly! the young man replied, with brisk civility. Miss Grice, whose brother once had the business now carried on by Bradford and Son, still resided in the town; and was a very curious old person, who never went out, and let nobody inside her doors. Most of her old friends were dead; and those who were still alive she had broken with. She was full of fierce, wild ways; was suspected of being crazy; and was execrated by the boys of Dibbledean as an “old tiger-cat.” In all probability, her intellects were a little shaken, years ago, by a dreadful scandal in the family, which quite crushed them down, being very respectable, religious people—