"Franky must not go into one of George Boult's shops," Sir Francis said.

"When Franky is old enough to leave school--to begin to earn his living--come and tell me, will you?"

Her face lit, till it was lovely as a sun-kissed flower. "Oh, I will! Oh, thank you," she said; and then she did put out her hand, and for an instant her fingers closed with all their soft strength round the hand he gave her. "Oh, thank you!" she said again.

Then he opened the door for her, and she went.

Deleah, when she had sent off the cheque, whose receipt must have surprised him exceedingly, to her brother, felt herself to be almost bursting with the desire to confide in some one the history of her visit to the rich brewer. She longed to descant on his looks, to repeat his words, above all to tell of the heavenly promise contained in that last divine sentence concerning Franky. No one must be told; but Deleah was over young to be burdened with a secret; it made her restless. She could not sit with Bessie, to hear her discuss the pattern of the sleeve she was cutting out for a new Sunday frock. She ran down to the shop, for the relief of being near her mother.

Mrs. Day glanced at her with welcoming eyes and turned at once again attentively upon her customer, a good lady difficult to please in the matter of candles.

"A tallow candle will do very well for the servants to gutter down, in the kitchen," she was irritably declaring. "But neither my daughter nor me can abide the smell of tallow; and your wax ones are a cruel price. Cruel, Mrs. Day! I suppose you could not make a reduction by my taking two packets?"

Mrs. Day shook a patient head. "We really get almost nothing out of them, as it is," she sadly protested. "These candles--called composite--ladies are beginning to buy them for servants' use as well as their own. I sell more composites now than either wax or tallow."

"You couldn't oblige me with one or two to try?--Oh, good afternoon, Miss Day. So you are not above coming into the shop sometimes, to bear your mama company?"

"Above it!" said Deleah; and because she had to be as sweet as sugar to her mother's customers, she smiled upon Mrs. Potter, who turned from the counter to engage her in talk.

"What for you, my dear?" Mrs. Day's next customer was a very shabby, very small boy, his grimy, eager face appearing just above the counter.

"A ha'p'r' o' acids, like th' last." He held up the coin in his fist to a.s.sure her of the good faith of the transaction.

"You give me more 'n that, last time, for a ha'p'ny. You ha'n't weighed 'em," the customer grumbled.

"Lucky for you I have not! Here! Take your ha'penny and be off."

Many customers of that unremunerative order had the widow. When the ragged little ones happened to be about the age of Franky they were sure of bouncing weight, and of getting their money returned. She smiled upon the scaramouch now, who was watched from the door by half a dozen confederates. The ha'penny was common property apparently, for each was presently clamouring for his share.

These screws of sweets and quarter pounds of broken biscuits given to the children of the very poor afforded her the only pleasure Mrs. Day got out of her long hours behind the grocery counter. For, in spite of the greed and selfishness of human nature, perhaps the most keenly felt deprivations of the one who has been rich and now is poor is the inability to put the hand lightly in the pocket, and with no thought if it can be afforded or no, to give to those who ask.

While Mrs. Day had been attending to her own customers with one ear, she had been hearing with the other a discussion going on at the opposite corner as to the price and the quality of the b.u.t.ter.

"Ours is from the best dairy," young--very young!--Mr. Pretty was a.s.suring the poor, respectable woman who was hanging back from putting his a.s.sertion to the test. "Fresh in, every day, mum. Like to put a bit on your tongue to try it?"

The woman did so, tasting the morsel with an anxious look. "But I can't afford to give you one-and-two the pound, if I can buy it a penny less, only a little way down the street."

"You don't get b.u.t.ter there like this, ma'am;" and young Mr. Pretty, who should have been Master Pretty surely, by rights, conveyed a piece of b.u.t.ter to his own tongue, and tasted it loudly, looking very wise.

"'Best quality, one and a penny.' I see it ticketed up as I come by Coman's." She turned round to the mistress of the shop. "I have always dealt along of you for b.u.t.ter, ma'am," she said. "I haven't no wish to leave you, but where I buy my b.u.t.ter--stand to reason I must buy the rest of my grosheries."

"If Coman is down to that; you shall have it for the same sum;" Mrs. Day promised. Her b.u.t.ter had already been "dropped" twice before, that day, in order to keep pace with the pa.s.sion for underselling of the new grocer, who had, for the undoing of the widow and the orphan, opened a shop lower down the street. Our poor retailer was selling her sugars, too, for less than she gave for them.

"You must do so for a time," George Boult had informed her. "Coman can't go on like this for ever. He'll get tired of the game soon--if I know anything of trade and tradesmen--then you can stick it on to your goods again."

While the subject of the b.u.t.ter was being debated, the child Franky came in from afternoon school. He was day-boarder at a cheap academy to which other small tradesmen's sons were sent--a school very inferior to that to which Bernard had gone. Companionship with rough, common children had not improved the manners of Franky, nor his habit of speech. He dashed in, with no thought of the deference due to customers, pushed out of his way the lady just deciding to let Mrs. Day try to procure in the town a candle more to her taste, rushed round the counter to his mother.

"C'n I go in to tea with w.i.l.l.y Spratt? w.i.l.l.y Spratt's ma says I may go to tea with 'm. I wish to, very much. C'n I go?"

"No, my dear. We like you to have tea with us. We can't spare you."

"C'n I go, ma? C'n I go? w.i.l.l.y Spratt's waitin' outside."

w.i.l.l.y Spratt was the son of the cutler and his wife, across the way. Very good customers of Mrs. Day, very good people; but--

"You haven't spoken to Mrs. Potter, Franky," Deleah said to divert the child's mind. "You know Mrs. Potter, sir. Where are your manners?"

"Quite 'ell, I thank ye," said Franky without a glance in the direction of the good lady in question, who had not the intention to inquire for his health. "C'n I go, ma? w.i.l.l.y's waitin' outside; and c'n I go?"

"Oh go!" his poor mother said. "Go! But, Franky dear, _don't_ pull your cap in that hideous fashion over your eyes."

But Franky had ducked his head from beneath his mother's hand, dashed round the counter, and was away to the society of the expectant w.i.l.l.y.

In an interregnum of peace between the going and coming of customers Mrs.

Day moaned to Deleah over the grievous subject of Franky's deterioration.

"He even brushes his hair, and wears his cap, in the fashion of that dreadful w.i.l.l.y Spratt. Being so young he does not stand a chance. He must grow into just a common little boy."

"Never, mama!" Deleah, the unfailing comforter, declared. "Why, Franky looks like a creature of a different mould from w.i.l.l.y Spratt. Franky, with that dear little nose of his, is distinctly aristocratic. Don't laugh! He is indeed. You and he are, you know; and any one can see it."

"Nonsense, my dear," the mother said, but smiled and was comforted on that score. "It is inevitable, I suppose," she went on, "that we fall into the way of speech of those around us. But it vexes me. Have you noticed that even Bessie habitually speaks of Mr. Gibbon now without the 'Mr.'?

'Gibbon' said this or 'Gibbon' did that. I don't like to mention it to her, but it offends my ear."

"I wouldn't say anything," Deleah counselled. "We know that Bessie is--so very easily upset."

"Poor Bessie!" the mother said. Both of them had a vision of Bessie drumming her heels on the floor in the hysterics into which a few thwarting words would throw her. "What about Bessie's love affairs?" Mrs.

Day presently asked. "I should be so thankful to see Bessie with a home of her own. She would be so happy, married. But--?"

She paused questioningly upon the "but," knowing it to be a very large one.

"I don't think Reggie means anything, mama."

"No," acquiesced Mrs. Day, sadly shaking her head. "I can't think how Bessie can be so blind. Yet, if it were otherwise, what an escape out of Bridge Street it would be for her."

Deleah was silent.

"Or for you?"

Deleah laughed with her colour high: "I would not marry Reggie Forcus if he were stuffed with gold, mama."

Mrs. Day turned away to wait upon the untidy little servant girl from over the way whose family had suddenly "run out of vinegar."

Her eyes had been sharp enough to see on which of her daughters' faces it was that Reginald Forcus's gaze dwelt; she had divined the attraction which drew the pleasure-loving, much sought young man to sit patiently for hours in the evening, watching the girls at their work. She looked, drearily, the vinegar being measured and the customer gone, between the intervening biscuit tins and pickle jars into the street. She had begun to cherish a dream that if not Bessie it might be her pretty Deleah who, through Reggie, should find a way out.

"Supposing he really wanted to marry either of us you would not surely like it, would you, mama?"

And Mrs. Day was obliged to admit with a kind of shame that she would.