Before Mrs. Day betook herself home she turned her feet in the direction of Bridge Street. It was situated in a busy part of the town, but was only a short and not by any means prosperous thoroughfare connecting two of the principal streets. Standing on the opposite pavement Mrs. Day contemplated the grocer's shop from which Mr. Jonas Carr was retiring. His name in small white letters was painted on the black lintel of the door: "Jonas Carr, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff." A dingy-looking little shop; not such a shop as any of those on which the wife of William Day had bestowed her custom, and she had never been within its door. The three windows above the shop looked dirty, and closely over them were stretched dirty lace curtains. The windows on the higher floor were dirtier still, and in place of the lace curtains were crooked-hanging blinds. Poor Mrs. Day set her lips tightly as she looked. Then she crossed the street and entered the shop. Mr. Carr, behind the counter, a toothless, unpleasant-looking old man, was exhibiting in an apathetic manner a piece of fat bacon to a customer. "You can have the streaky if you prefer it," he said. The customer did prefer the streaky, and took it, half wrapped, under her shawl, and went. "And what for you, pray?" Mrs. Day asked for a quarter of a pound of tea, and while he served her looked about at the dark little dirty shop with its mingled odours. When she left the establishment of Jonas Carr her spirits had risen. The whole thing was ludicrous. Imagine the name of Lydia Day, "licensed to sell tobacco and snuff," painted over the door! Imagine her--her!--behind the counter of that squalid little shop! Imagine Bessie, and her exquisite young Deleah passing their lives in that upper room behind the net curtains! It was ridiculous, grotesque, impossible, and could not be. But she was to find with astonishingly small waste of time that it could be. And it was. CHAPTER X Exiles From Life's Revels For the first year that Mrs. Day waited behind the counter of the Bridge Street shop more trade was done there than in the most prosperous period of old Jonas Carr's tenancy. Quite half the ladies of Brockenham left their particular grocers to bestow their custom on the widow. From kindness of heart, from curiosity, from the impulse to do as others were doing, people flocked to purchase their tea and sugar of Lydia Day, licensed also to supply them, if desired, with tobacco and snuff. George Boult's prognostications of the success of the venture seemed to be more than fulfilled. Bessie stoutly refusing to go into the shop--it took more than George Boult to manage Bessie!--he was constrained to sanction the engaging of a youth to assist behind the counter. Mr. Pretty, therefore--he was called "Mr." for business purposes, his tender years hardly entitling him to the designation--and a boy to go errands, composed the staff.