The gross weekly takings were now £60 a week and Nancy, though she had given up her drawing, still had the house and children to consider. We had no car, and constant emergency bicycle-rides had to be made to Oxford to get new stock from the wholesalers; we made a point of always being able to supply whatever was asked for. We engaged a shop-boy to call for orders, but the work was still too heavy. Mrs. Howard went out of partnership and Nancy and I found great difficulty in understanding her accounts. I was fairly good at conventional book-keeping; the keeping of company accounts had been part of my lecture-syllabus when I was instructing cadets. But that did not help me with these, which were on a novel system. The shop business finally ousted everything, not only Nancy’s painting, but my writing, my university work, and Nancy’s proper supervision of the house and children. We had the custom of every resident of Boar’s Hill but two or three. One of those whom we courted unsuccessfully was Mrs. Masefield. The proximity of the shop to her house did not please her. And her housekeeper, she said, preferred to deal with a provision merchant in Oxford and she could not override this arrangement. However, to show that there was no ill-feeling, she used to come once a week to the shop and buy a tin of Vim and a packet of Lux, for which she paid money down from a cash-box which she carried with her. The moral problems of trade interested me. Nancy and I both found that it was very difficult at this time of fluctuating prices to be really honest; we could not resist the temptation of undercharging the poor villagers of Wootton, who were frequent customers, and recovering our money from the richer residents. Playing at Robin Hood came easily to me. Nobody ever caught us out; it was as easy as shelling peas, the shop-boy said, who also took his turn behind the counter. We found that most people bought tea by price and not by quality. If we happened to be out of the tea selling at ninepence a quarter which Mrs. So-and-so always bought, refusing the eightpenny tea, and Mrs. So-and-so asked for it in a hurry, the only thing to do was to make up a pound of the sevenpenny, which was the same colour as the ninepenny, and charge it at ninepence; the difference would not be noticed. We were sorry for the commercial travellers who came sweating up the hill with their heavy bags of samples, usually on foot, and had to be sent away without any orders. They would pitch a hard-luck tale and often we would relent and get in more stock than we needed. In gratitude they would tell us some of the tricks of the trade, advising us, for instance, never to cut cheese or bacon exactly to weight, but to make it an ounce or two more and overcharge for this extra piece. ‘There’s few can do the sum before you take the stuff off the scales and there’s fewer still who will take the trouble to weigh up again when they get back home.’