It certainly was a great relief to them all, when the shop closed at sundown. Every one felt it a blessing but Ira Elkado; it cut him off from two or three hours of gazing at Jenny Hart, and in regaling himself with the thoughts of conquering this hard hearted gipsy, as he always called her. He lay awake for hours, very often, in trying to perfect some plan by which he could get admittance to her during the evening; but it never came to any thing. He was one of those kind of persons whose imaginations are fertile enough; but with physical capacities so entirely different, that a life is spent, or dawdled away, without any benefit to themselves or others. Had Ira Elkado been as brisk in his motions as he was in his mind, the shop and Jenny Hart might have been his long ago; but her good genius preserved her from a hard fate. Hard it would have been; for Ira Elkado never ended one of his aspiring soliloquies without grinding his teeth and promising himself great satisfaction in scourging her, after marriage, as she had scourged him before. Poor Jenny Hart did not mean to scourge him; it was her way of managing people. She was shrewd, and treated them according to their merits; but she was never unjust. As soon as the shop was shut, and she had presided at the tea-table, (for in the old fashioned way, the clerks always lived in the house, and ate at the table, one after the other,) she assisted Martin Barton and Archy Campbell in counting the money of the day; and it was a job. But by the judicious mode of keeping the different money apart; and, oh, how she rated the poor clerk, in whose box a sixpence was found in the shilling department—much time was saved. Martin Barton and his wife, good souls, went tired to bed, as soon as this was over; and then came Jenny Hart’s holiday: then was the time to see her. Talk of her beauty and musical voice; her bounding spirit and her grace of motion, behind the counter; what was all that to the seeing her up in Mrs. Armstrong’s room, with the twin sisters! Then her joyous spirit relaxed; tape, bobbin, buttons, money, marketing, bank stock, rents—for Jenny managed all the money concerns; and Martin Barton was now immensely rich—then all was combed out of her head with the first brush that was put to her fine glossy hair. It was the signal for fun and frolic, when her light step was heard bounding up the narrow stairs; and there stood the two girls ready to snatch the first kiss, and to say the first word. From the time they could hold the brush, they coveted the pleasure of combing and brushing her hair; and the poor thing was generally so tired that she was really glad when they were old enough to do it properly for her. So up she came, and down she sat on the sofa; and a world of things had she to hear from the two innocent girls; and then came the rummaging of her apron pockets and her ample basket; and then came Mrs. Armstrong, with her account of the progress of her pupils.