Her suggestion, no, it was more than that, it was a demand, was that this money should be laid out in taking a shop. A double-fronted shop whereof one side should be devoted to art pictorial in the shape of its accessories, engravings, frames, artistic materials, etc., and the other to what is rather pompously called art needlework, and fancy goods, the latter being an enormously elastic term. To say that I was alarmed would be putting matters much too mildly. I was appalled. I dreaded beyond expression increasing my already heavy liabilities. I doubted with a scepticism of the blackest my ability to run a shop for myself, however well I might be able to do it for another--in fact, I saw nothing in the proposal but disaster. But my wife, confident in her powers as a shopkeeper (having had no experience) and fired with a laudable desire to help in the collection of the family income, insisted, even at the length of declaring that if I would not take a shop she would without my help. And that I saw would be avoiding an imaginary Scylla for the terrors of a real Charybdis. So I yielded, ungracefully, but completely, and thenceforward until the time which shall complete this narrative never did I know a care-free hour. The first thing was to find the shop, and if I were able in Mr Pett Ridge's delightful manner to detail our experiences in those pilgrimages I doubt not that the recital would make several readable columns. The lies we were told would fill several volumes. The fortunes we were sure to make were so vast that they were unspendable. Every miserable, little, obviously hopeless shop was lauded so that I began to fear a complete obsession, and at last I declared that I would not take any advertised business at all, I would build up a business of our own. Yes, I used those memorable words, and, to my shame be it said, without even the excuse that I believed them myself. Miserable man that I was, I felt certain that this enterprise of ours was foredoomed. I knew, none better, that there was nothing of the Napoleon about me, that I was far too prone to take no for an answer for anything of that kind to be possible.