"I do think of him. I think he will be very angry if this is done at once. You must wait until he has had time to get sick of it." "As soon as the shop is closed I shall go to Mr. Boult and beg of him to help me to buy him off," Mrs. Day persisted. She rose up stiffly from her chair and stood beside it, her hand grasping its back, waiting for the strength to come to her to take up the burthen of business again. Ah, if only she had leisure for grieving, if she might lie on the sofa and cry, as Bessie was doing, what a luxury it would have been! The assistant had been left to "get up" an order for her most important customer in her absence. He had put the wrong sugars into parcels, and the wrong tea. In reaching the tin of "foy grass" from the top shelf, he had knocked down and broken a bottle of piccalilli, catching its contents in the crystallised sugar drawer. Mrs. Day was very gentle with him, who was younger even than poor Bernard. CHAPTER XVIII The Dangerous Scrooge Mrs. Day was spared the errand to Mr. George Boult on which she had been bent, for that gentleman, before the time for putting up shutters was reached, having had an interview with his Manchester man, sought the widow in her shop. Since having been made a magistrate, it was to be observed that certain changes had taken place in the appearance and the attire of the successful draper. He affected now the light-coloured tweed suit of the country gentlemen, rather than the black decorous garments of trade. A deerstalker replaced the tall hat to which his head was accustomed, and he wore it, as was the fashion among the younger generation at that period, ever so little on one side. His short beard was trimmed to a point, his moustache turned upwards at the ends, on his hands were gloves of tawny-coloured leather. Altogether he now presented a figure which, in spite of the undue protuberance of stomach, and the shortness and thickness of neck, he had the satisfaction of knowing to be strangely rejuvenated and quite up-to-date. "Business not very lively to-day, ma'am?" he said in his quick, hard way, looking round upon the empty shop. It was about everybody's tea-time. A slack hour, Mrs. Day reminded him. "Coman's was full, as I came by," he told her. "He's got a sugar in his window at three-ha'pence; one great placard quoting primest butter at elevenpence; another setting forth that a quarter pound of tea would be given away with every half-crown spent in the shop." Mrs. Day sighed despondently. "We can't cope with him," she said. "There is no good in trying." "What do you intend to do then? Do you suppose families will buy their groshery" (he was always pronouncing it "groshery") "of you when they can buy it cheaper, a few shops farther down? Why should they, ma'am, come to think of it?" "They won't, of course," Mrs. Day acquiesced, "but we may as well be ruined through lack of custom as through selling our goods for less than we give for them."