And she did not mind; but, alas! what now was her fate? Ask it not. She had made her sacrifice in the spirit of utter abnegation, and none need count the cost which she never reckoned. CHAPTER XV. The same cloud of trouble and sorrow that now darkened the daily life of Rachel Gray, soon gathered over her neighbours and friends. With boding and pain, she watched the coming of a calamity, to them still invisible. Mr. Jones got up one morning, and felt exactly as usual. He took down his shutters, and no presentiment warned him of the sight that was going to greet his eyes. The Teapot stood at the corner of a street which had naturally another corner facing it; that corner--let it be angle, if you like, critical reader--had, from time immemorial, been in the possession of a brown, tottering, untenanted house, whose broken parlour windows Mr. Jones had always seen filled with, blank oak shutters, strong enough for security and closing within. But now, to his dismay, he saw half-a-dozen workmen pulling down the bottom of the house, and leaving the top untouched. His heart gave a great thump in his bosom. "I'm a lost man," he thought, "they're making a shop of it." And so they were, but what sort of a shop was it to be? That was the question. Jones lost no time; he put down his shutter, thrust his hands in his pocket--his usual resource when he wanted to look unconcerned-- sauntered awhile down the street, talked to some children, and finally came back to the workmen. "Pulling it down," he said, after looking at them for awhile, "an old rubbishing concern--ain't it?" "Pulling it down!" echoed one of the workmen, giving him a contemptuous look, "much you know about it." "Well, but what is it to be?" asked Jones, looking as simple as he could, "stables?" "Stables! a shop, stupid!" "Oh! a shop! Ah! it's to be a shop, is it? And what sort of a shop-- public-house? We want one." "Better ask Mr. Smithson; the house is his." "Oh! it's Mr. Smithson's, is it?" Jones walked away much relieved. Mr. Smithson had long talked of removing himself and his earthenware to some larger tenement than that which he now occupied; a pleasant neighbour he was not; but anything was better than the fear which had for a moment seized the heart of Richard Jones. The workmen did not linger over their task, indeed, Mr. Smithson took care that they should not. Night and morning, the whole day long, Jones saw him after them; he watched him through the pots of Scotch marmelade that decorated the front of his shop window, and internally admired the indefatigable zeal Mr. Smithson displayed. Humbly, too, he contrasted it with his own deficiencies in that respect "I ain't got no spirit; that's the fact of it," confessed Mr. Jones in his own heart.