In a comparatively short space of time, the bricklayers had done their task; they were succeeded by the carpenters, who proved as zealous and as active. And now fear and trembling once more seized the heart of Richard Jones. What were those busy carpenters about? why were they fabricating shelves and drawers? drawers of every size, some small, some large, just such drawers as he had in his shop? He questioned one of their body: what was to be sold in that shop--did he know? The man could not tell, but rather fancied it was to be an oil and colour shop. Then it was not to be Mr. Smithson's own? Oh, no, certainly! Jones walked away, a prey to the most tormenting anxiety. Was the man right--was he wrong? had he spoken the truth? had he deceived him? Was he, Jones, now that his business was really improving, was he threatened with a rival? Or was this but a false alarm, the phantom of his fears? what would he not have given to think so! His ease was the more distressing, that he dared unburthen his mind to none, to Mary least of any. She, poor little thing, far from sharing her father's fears, rejoiced in the prospect of a new shop. "It'll make the street quite gay," she said to her father, "especially if it's a linen-draper's. I wonder if they'll have pretty bonnets." She tried to obtain information on this interesting point, but failed completely. Suspense is worse than the worst reality. Richard Jones lost appetite and sleep. Slumber, when it came, was accompanied by such fearful nightmare, that waking thoughts, though bitter, were not, at least, so terrible. He could not forget the opposite shop; in the first place, because he saw it every morning with his bodily eyes; in the second, because it ever haunted that inward eye called by Wordsworth 'the bliss of solitude.' How far it proved a bliss to Richard Jones, the reader may imagine. All this time the shop had been progressing, and now bricklayer, carpenter, glazier, and decorator haying done their work, it was completed and ready for its tenant, who, however, seemed in no hurry to appear. This proved the worst time for Richard Jones. To look at that shop all the day long, and not to be able to make anything of it; to wonder whether it were a friend or an enemy; whether it would give new lustre to the street on which he had cast his fortunes, or blast those fortunes in their very birth, was surely no ordinary trial. Well might he grow thin, haggard, and worn. At length, the crisis came. At the close of November, a dread rumour reached his ears. The shop was to be a grocer's shop, and it was to open a week before Christmas. That same evening, Mary came home crying, and much agitated. Mrs. Brown, with her usual kindness, had given information. "Oh, father!" she exclaimed, "Mrs. Brown says it's to be a grocer's shop."