"
"For all that I'd have liked to scrape the top of the dirt off him. And
he've got on the knickers with the patch at the back!"
Mrs. Day, having been up for her tea and retired again to the shop, took
her place behind the counter, and dispatched Mr. Pretty to his meal.
No customers came in. She turned her sad and patient eyes upon the street,
thinking--not of the cutler's over the way, with whose son Franky had
formed such an undesirable friendship, nor of the passers by on the narrow
pavement, nor of the tradesmen's carts rattling over the cobble stones;
thinking of Bernard on his way to India and untold danger and privations,
of Deleah and her dismissal from the school. Her pretty, good child, to
have received such shabby treatment! Deleah, who if she had chosen might
have queened it over them all. Of her steadily declining business, too,
she thought, and of how impossible it was for her to cope with Coman's,
down the street. To-morrow was the seventh, the day set apart in each
month by Mr. Boult for going into her affairs; looking through her books,
catechising her, cross-questioning her, giving her advice in his
tyrannical, bullying way. From this her thoughts glanced off to the
subject Bessie had held forth upon in her irritating, worrying fashion,
through tea.
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