"Well, I always take them thin myself," said Rachel, in a tone of relief; "but some people--you'd wonder!--they like them that thick that a spoon will stand up in the middle! It's curious how tastes differ, but it takes all sorts to make a world, they say." "Verily," said Mona earnestly. "But now I must tell you about my customers. You have not even asked whether I had any, and I assure you I had a most exciting time." "Well, I never! Was there anybody in? I was that taken up with Mrs Smith, you see, poor body!" "Of course. But now you must know in the first place that I had three, whole, live customers," and Mona proceeded to give a pretty full account of the experiences of the morning. "That would be Mistress Dickson--I ken fine," said Rachel, relapsing in her excitement into the Doric, "a fractious, fault-finding body. I'm sure she may take her custom elsewhere, and welcome, for me. I never heard the like. She aye has an eye to a good bargain, and if I say I make sixpence profit out of her in a twelvemonth, it's more likely above the mark than below it." "That I can quite believe," said Mona; "but you know, dear, the elastic had perished, and she was quite right to complain of that. We must get some fresh in the course of the week." "Hoot awa! We'll do nothing of the sort. If the traveller comes round between this and then, we'll take some off him, but I'll not stir a foot to oblige old Betsy Dickson. She knows quite well that I don't need to keep the shop." "But, dear,"--Mona seated herself on a stool at her cousin's feet, and laid her white hand on the wrinkled red one,--"I don't see that requiring to keep the shop has anything to do with it. If we keep it at all, surely we ought to keep it really well." "And who says I don't keep it well? Nobody heeds old Betsy and her grumbling. Everything I buy is the best of its kind; not the tawdry stuff you get in the London shops, that's only got up to sell. You don't know a good tape and stay-lace when you see them, or I wouldn't need to tell you that." "I am quite sure of it. But you know, dear, you can get good things as well as bad in the London shops, and you can get them fresh and wonderfully cheap. The next time you want a good many things, I wish you would let me go to London for them. I am sure at the Stores and some other places I know, I could make better bargains than you can with your traveller; and I would bring a lot of those dainty novelties that people expect to pay dear for in the provinces. We would make our little shop the talk of the country-side." "Hoot, havers, lassie!" laughed Rachel, no more entertaining the idea than if Mona had suggested a voyage to the North Pole. "Why, I declare," she added, with a renewal of that agreeable sense of superiority, "you're not like me; you're a born shopkeeper after all! But who else was in?" Mona drew a long face. "There was a _man_," she said, with mock solemnity.