d even when price was not the
main difficulty, he could not talk to a customer, or to a person whose
customer he was, with the same rough, gruff, cajoling, bullying skill as
his father. He could not, by taking thought, do what his father had
done naturally, by the mere blind exercise of instinct. His father,
with all his clumsiness, and his unscientific methods, had a certain
quality, unseizable, Unanalysable, and Edwin had not that quality.

He caught himself, in the rapid calculating, giving himself the benefit
of every doubt; somehow he could not help it, childish as it was. And
even so, he could see, or he could feel, that the comparison was not
going to be favourable to the regent. It grew plainer that the volume
of business had barely been maintained, and it was glaringly evident
that the expenses, especially wages, had sensibly increased. He
abandoned the figures not quite finished, partly from weary disgust, and
partly because Big James most astonishingly walked into the shop, from
the back. He was really quite glad to encounter Big James, a
fellow-creature.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWO.

"Seeing the door open, sir," said Big James cheerfully, through the
narrow doorway of the cubicle, "I stepped in to see as it was no one
unlawful."

"Did I leave the side door open?" Edwin murmured. It was surprising
even to himself, how forgetful he was at times, he with his mania for
orderliness!

Big James was in his best clothes, and seemed, with his indestructible
blandness, to be perfectly happy.

"I was just strolling up to have a look at the ox," he added.

"Oh!" said Edwin. "Are they cooking it?"

"They should be, sir. But my fear is it may turn, in this weather."

"I'll come out with you," said Edwin, enlivened.

He locked the desk, and hurriedly straightened a few things, and then
they went out together, by Wedgwood Street and the Cock Yard up to the
market-place. No breeze moved, and the heat was tremendous. And there
at the foot of the Town Hall tower, and in its scanty shadow, a dead ox,
slung by its legs from an iron construction, was frizzling over a great
primitive fire. The vast flanks of the animal, all rich yellows and
browns, streamed with grease, some of which fell noisily on the almost
invisible flames, while the rest was ingeniously caught in a system of
runnels. The spectacle was obscene, nauseating to the eye, the nose,
and t