"I didn't go for to do it, Marier," he explained penitently. "It's 'abit. I'll get out of it soon. It don't look well, I know, in a business; but it do seem a comfort, somehow." "O you an' your comfort! A lot you study _my_ comfort, Hedward!"--for he was Ted no more--"a-toilin' an' a-moilin' with everything to think of myself while you look on with your 'ands in your pockets. Do try an' not look like a stuck ninny, do!" And Hedward, whose every attempt at help or suggestion had been severely repulsed, slouched uneasily to the door, and strove to look as business-like as possible. "There you go again, stickin' in the doorway and starin' up an' down the street, as though there was no business doin'"--there was none, but that might not be confessed. "D'y' expect people to come in with you a-fillin' up the door? Do come in, do! You'd be better out o' the shop altogether." Hedward thought so too, but said nothing. He had been invested with his Sunday clothes of lustrous black, and brought into the shop to give such impression of a shop-walker as he might. He stood uneasily on alternate feet, and stared at the ceiling, the floor, or the space before him, with an unhappy sense of being on show and not knowing what was expected of him. He moved his hands purposelessly, and knocked things down with his elbows; he rubbed his hair all up behind, and furtively wiped the resulting oil from his hand on his trousers: never looking in the least degree like a shop-walker. The first customer was a very small child who came for a ha'porth of pins, and on whom Hedward gazed with much interest and respect, while Mrs. Munsey handed over the purchase: abating not a jot of his appreciation when the child returned, later, to explain that what she really wanted was sewing cotton. Other customers were disappointingly few. Several old neighbors came in from curiosity, to talk and buy nothing. One woman, who looked at many things without buying, was discovered after her departure to have stolen a pair of stockings; and Hedward was duly abused for not keeping a sharp look-out while his wife's back was turned. Finally, the shutters went up on a day's takings of three and sevenpence farthing, including a most dubious threepenny bit. But then, as Mrs. Munsey said, when you are in business you must expect trade to vary; and of course there would be more customers when the shop got known; although Hedward certainly might have taken the trouble to find one in a busier thoroughfare. Hedward (whose opinion in that matter, as in others, had never been asked) retired to the back-yard to smoke a pipe--a thing he had been pining for all day; but was quickly recalled (the pipe being a clay) upon Mrs. Munsey's discovery that the act could be observed from a neighbor's window. He was continually bringing the family into disgrace, and Mrs. Munsey despaired aloud over him far into the night.