'S LUCK

'The Little Shop with the Large Heart' had suffered a grave loss: Miss
Totty Nancarrow had withdrawn her custom from it.

Totty had patronised Mrs. Bower very steadily for some five years. It
was true that the large-hearted shop put a rather large price on
certain things, in comparison with what they _could_ be bought for in
Lambeth. If you wanted a pot of marmalade, for instance, Mrs. Bower
sold it for sixpence, whereas it was notoriously purchasable for
fivepence-halfpenny at grocers in Lambeth Walk. If you went for a
quarter of a pound of butter, you had no choice of quality, and paid
fourpence three farthings, whilst in Lambeth Walk you obtained a better
article for the even fourpence. Totty, however, had a principle that
one ought to deal rather with acquaintances than with strangers, and
another principle that it was better to pay a halfpenny more for an
article to be had by crossing the street than a halfpenny less and go a
whole street's length for it. True girl of the people was Totty, herein
as in other respects. It was a simple fact that Mrs. Bower's business
depended on the indolence and indifference to small economies of those
women who lived in her immediate neighbourhood. It is the same kind of
thing that leads working people to pay for having meat badly cooked at
the baker's instead of cooking it cheaply and well themselves; that
leads them to buy expensive, ready-prepared suppers at the pork
butcher's and the fried-fish shop, instead of tossing up an equally
good and very cheap supper for themselves.

Considering her income, Totty had spent a great deal with Mrs. Bower,
as you remember that lady once remarking. Totty had a mind to live on
luxuries; if she had not money enough for both bread and marmalade, she
chose to have the marmalade alone; if she could not buy meat and
pickles at the same time, she would have pickles and go without meat.
Marmalade and pickles she deemed the indispensables of life; if you
could not get those--well, it was no uncommon thing for poor creatures
to be driven to the workhouse. And the strange thing was that she
looked so well on such diet. Since the age of fifteen, when, in truth,
she had been a little peaked and terribly tenuous at the waist, her
personal appearance had steadily improved. Her spirits had, by degrees,
reached their present point of perpetual effervescence. But Totty could
be grave, and, if occasion were, sad.

She had been both grave and sa