The Constables’ extensive bakehouse and shop at Friarton bore no resemblance in any respect to Friarton Mill. In place of being a venerable structure—half superannuated, it was a comparatively new building furnished with every modern improvement, in full activity. Indeed it had been erected by Peter Constable’s enterprise when he began to flourish greatly in his twin trades. The large and somewhat staring shop had an intimation inscribed over the door, ‘Peter Constable, Baker and Confectioner,’ and the pledge was fulfilled in the display of every description of British bread within the windows. The shop and its double sign stood out boldly and with perfect confidence among the shops in the old-fashioned High Street where the weekly corn market was still held, on the pavement before the door of the Ayott Arms Inn. Old Peter Constable had attended the corn market with the regularity of clock-work, and had enjoyed the opportunity afforded him, in the intervals between inspecting samples of grain, of looking over the way with entire complacency at the handsome shop and bakehouse which were among the fruits of his industry and enterprise. The immediate vicinity of the shop had also enabled Peter to entertain hospitably select little parties of his customers among the farmers, in the back-shop, and to conclude bargains with them there in greater privacy than could be found in the street, or in the commercial room of the inn. Fan Constable, in walking up Friarton High Street, had not looked upon the great bake-shop with the same favourable eyes. But she was a true and high-spirited woman. She had never gone out of her way or got up an excuse to avoid passing her father’s shop-door. She had walked straight by it, though she might not have been able to prevent her foolish colour from rising, in company with Mrs. Fremantle, and while Fan saw Clara Houghton advancing in the opposite direction. Fan would have risked meeting Clara on the doorstep, and if the vicar’s daughter had declined to own acquaintance with a valuable ally and an old school-fellow to boot because of the fire of half-mischievous, half-malicious eyes which Fan knew so well were watching the encounter, then let the friendship come to a violent end on the spot, the miller and baker’s daughter would have said without hesitation, though its destruction must undoubtedly have proved a blow to Fan. She had never failed her father or even betrayed any repugnance to joining him at the shop when she was in town with him on market days, and he was to drive her home in the pony phaeton, which to please Fan had superseded a gig, just as the gig had in its time, to please Fan’s mother, taken the place of a spring cart.