ence. Just like any other man, Pinch-a-penny must
ease that conscience or lose sleep o' nights. And so in seasons of
plenty up went the price of tea at Pinch-a-Penny's shop. And up went
the price of pork. And up went the price of flour. All sky-high, ecod!
Never was such harsh times, says Peter; why, my dear man, up St.
John's way, says he, you couldn't touch tea nor pork nor flour with a
ten-foot sealing-gaff; and no telling what the world was coming to,
with prices soaring like a gull in a gale and all the St. John's
merchants chary of credit!

"Damme!" said Pinch-a-Penny; "'tis awful times for us poor traders. No
tellin' who'll weather this here panic. I'd not be surprised if we got
a war out of it."

Well, now, on the Newfoundland north-coast in them days 'twasn't much
like the big world beyond. Folk didn't cruise about. They was too
busy. And they wasn't used to it, anyhow. Gingerbread Cove folk wasn't
born at Gingerbread Cove, raised at Rickity Tickle, married at
Seldom-Come-By, aged at Skeleton Harbor, and buried at Run-by-Guess;
they were born and buried at Gingerbread Cove. So what the fathers
thought at Gingerbread Cove the sons thought; and what the sons knowed
had been knowed by the old men for a good many years. Nobody was used
to changes. They was shy of changes. New ways was fearsome. And so the
price of flour was a mystery. It is, anyhow--wherever you finds it. It
always has been. And why it should go up and down at Gingerbread Cove
was beyond any man of Gingerbread Cove to fathom. When Pinch-a-Penny
said the price of flour was up--well, then, she was up; and that's all
there was about it. Nobody knowed no better. And Pinch-a-Penny had the
flour.

Pinch-a-Penny had the pork, too. And he had the sweetness and the tea.
And he had the shoes and the clothes and the patent medicines. And he
had the twine and the salt. And he had all the cash there was at
Gingerbread Cove. And he had the schooner that fetched in the supplies
and carried away the fish to the St. John's markets. He was the only
trader at Gingerbread Cove; his storehouses and shop was fair jammed
with the things the folk of Gingerbread Cove couldn't do without and
wasn't able to get nowhere else. So, all in all, Pinch-a-Penny Peter
could make trouble for the folk that made trouble for he. And the folk
grumbled. By times, ecod, they grumbled like the devil of a fine
Sunday morning! But 'twas all they had the courage to do. And
Pinch-a-Penny le