It was about everybody's tea-time. A slack hour, Mrs. Day reminded him.

"Coman's was full, as I came by," he told her. "He's got a sugar in his window at three-ha'pence; one great placard quoting primest b.u.t.ter at elevenpence; another setting forth that a quarter pound of tea would be given away with every half-crown spent in the shop."

Mrs. Day sighed despondently. "We can't cope with him," she said. "There is no good in trying."

"What do you intend to do then? Do you suppose families will buy their groshery" (he was always p.r.o.nouncing it "groshery") "of you when they can buy it cheaper, a few shops farther down? Why should they, ma'am, come to think of it?"

"They won't, of course," Mrs. Day acquiesced, "but we may as well be ruined through lack of custom as through selling our goods for less than we give for them."

"I'll tell you what will ruin you," he said brusquely. "And that is lack of s.p.u.n.k." He derived a pleasure from the belief, apparently; he announced it with so much gusto. "In business you must not be a coward, ma'am. You must go for the man that's 'underselling' you, stand up to him, pay him out of his own coin."

Poor Mrs. Day heard him with a fainting spirit, dreary-eyed. What did she care for paying out Coman, down the street! Her heart was full of Bernard.

"Now look here, ma'am; _re_-dress your window. Where's your young man?

Where's Pretty?" Pretty, who cordially loathed George Boult, reluctantly appeared. "Look here, young man; to-night, when you've up-shuttered, clear out half your window. Shove it full of the best sugar you've got. Put a card on it--one that'll shout at 'em as they pa.s.s. Letters that long, do you see, and black--_black_. 'Our three-ha'penny sugar. Comparisons invited.' Just that. See? And, look here again, ma'am, stick a ha'penny, or a penny a pound, on to your other goods, to make up. Understand?"

Mrs. Day faintly admitted that she understood.

"Oh, these things are easy enough to manage, get the hang of 'em. I don't object to this underselling on Coman's part. A little conflict in trade wakes interest, stirs us all up, customers and salesmen. We're too much inclined in Brockenham to go to sleep. We must wake up, Mrs. Day. That's our motter."

Then, with hardly a pause, and with no change of tone, he went on to the subject so near to her heart. "I have come in to speak to you, ma'am, about this boy of yours. He has conducted himself towards me with the basest ingrat.i.tude--but that we need not refer to, that don't matter, although I must say, considering what I have done for you all--"

Mrs. Day glanced towards Mr. Pretty, p.r.i.c.king his ears, and dismissed him to his task of grinding coffee in the cellar.

"Mr. Boult, if you would spare me!" she pleaded with a pitiful kind of dignity. "We owe you a great deal, I know; not one of us is ungrateful.

But I beg you to be so considerate as to spare me complaints of my son."

"I don't forget you are his mother, ma'am. I don't forget it for a moment.

Otherwise--"

"What Bernard has done is the cause of the greatest grief to me--grief I do not really know how to support. I was coming to see you, Mr. Boult.

Coming to ask you--to beg of you--"

He lifted his square-looking hand, clad in the new orange-coloured glove, to silence her. "Don't ask it," he said. "I know what you want me to do.

Gibbon prepared me. You wish me to buy off this ungain-doing son. Not a penny of my money shall go to do it. Not a penny!"

He brought the hand down smartly upon the counter, to emphasize the words.

Mrs. Day, gazing sad-eyed at him, said nothing.

"The boy has behaved like an ill-conditioned, ignorant cub--Well! I'll spare you. We know how he's behaved. Let him pay for it. He'll get a sickener, I don't doubt. Serve him right. Serve him well right."

"But, Mr. Boult--he is my son."

"What difference does that make, my dear lady? Every ungain-doing boy is some mother's son."

"If Bernard could have one more chance!"

"He's got it. By buying him off you are trying to do away with his chance.

The boy's been brought up too soft. Give him hardships; it's the best physic for him."

"Think of the forced companionship with those he must a.s.sociate with!"

"When he could pick his companions he chose the worst he could find. He's amongst a rougher crew now, but a far and away better one for him."

The tears were running down Mrs. Day's cheeks. She wiped them away furtively with her hand, but he saw them. Saw, and resented them with the impatient sense of injury a woman's tears arouse in that order of man. He turned his back upon her, and began fingering the lemons displayed in a box on the other counter.

"Think over what I've said, ma'am. Words of wisdom you've heard, and every one of 'em for your good. And see that your young man carries out my suggestion for the window to-morrow, will you? Miss Bessie upstairs?"

Mrs. Day, staring into the street through her tears, said she believed her daughter was in the sitting-room.

"I'll just run up and pay my respects to Miss Bessie, then."

He had adopted the habit, of late, of going up to pay his respects in that quarter after every business interview in the shop. Bessie pretended to look upon the predilection for her society as presumption on George Boult's part.

"A man as old as my own father!" she often said to Emily, with whom she had many confidences.

"All the more reason for him to come fascinatin' round you," Emily declared.

How this ill-favoured, more than middle-aged spinster came to be an authority on affairs of the heart she would have found it difficult to explain; but she had ever an opinion to offer on such matters, and she gave it with a weightiness and a conclusiveness which rendered it final.

"It's when they gets past the time that females is likely to cast an eye to them that they're dangerous--so madly are they then overcome with love," she a.s.serted.

"I don't think old Scrooge will ever be dangerous," Bessie regretfully demurred. She was much interested. "What do you mean by 'dangerous,'

Emily?"

Emily would not descend to detail. She nodded a wise head. "You look out!"

she counselled. "And remember, Miss Bessie, I'm always at hand when he's near."

The idea that the elderly draper might suddenly become riotous, gave always a zest to the _tete-a-tete_ which otherwise it might have lacked.

She was, truth to tell, a little disappointed to find him after each visit no more alarming than he had been before. She even tried to pique him into an exhibition of the "dangerous" symptom, treating him with the caprice and the disdain she dared not have shown but for Emily's repeated a.s.surance she could play as she liked with him and he would never take offence. The mother, Deleah, even little Franky, had to mind their "P's and Q's" with the man who, as he himself had phrased it, "stood at the back of them." Bessie was on a different plane, she told herself, and could do as she liked.

"I've been bullying your mother about that ill-doing brother of yours," he said. "I thought I'd better say a word or two to you on the same subject."

"Thank you, Mr. Boult. You have forgotten to take off your hat."

He took it off with reluctance, because it concealed the bald top of his head, and without being asked to do so, seated himself in the chair opposite hers.

Every man carries about with him his ideal of what a woman should look like, although he probably changes it a good many times before he arrives at the age, in Emily's opinion, dangerous for a lover. At the mature age of fifty-five, George Boult's ideal happened to be realised by Bessie Day.

Fair-skinned she was, and very plump. Her waist was small, exceedingly, as was in accordance with the taste of that day, but her hips and bust were large; there was a promise of a double chin to come later. The necklace of Venus showed alluringly in her full young throat, and in the knuckles of her small white hands were dimples.

"Is that how you pa.s.s your days?" George Boult asked her, pointing to the book she still held in her hands.

"Reading? A part of my day. A very good way, too, to pa.s.s it. Don't you think so?"

"I call it a sinful way. A sinful waste of time."

"Oh, Mr. Boult! But it is only stupid, uncultured people who don't read."

"I read my newspaper every day," he said, as if she had accused him. "It is all that business people have time for."