were by no means unanimous as to the
advantages promised by this prospect of increased population and trading,
being substantial men, who liked doing a quiet business in which they
were sure of their customers, and could calculate their returns to a
nicety. Hitherto, it had been held a point of honour by the families in
Grimworth parish, to buy their sugar and their flannel at the shop where
their fathers and mothers had bought before them; but, if newcomers were
to bring in the system of neck-and-neck trading, and solicit feminine
eyes by gown-pieces laid in fan-like folds, and surmounted by artificial
flowers, giving them a factitious charm (for on what human figure would a
gown sit like a fan, or what female head was like a bunch of
China-asters?), or, if new grocers were to fill their windows with
mountains of currants and sugar, made seductive by contrast and
tickets,--what security was there for Grimworth, that a vagrant spirit in
shopping, once introduced, would not in the end carry the most important
families to the larger market town of Cattleton, where, business being
done on a system of small profits and quick returns, the fashions were of
the freshest, and goods of all kinds might be bought at an advantage?

With this view of the times predominant among the tradespeople at
Grimworth, their uncertainty concerning the nature of the business which
the sallow-complexioned stranger was about to set up in the vacant shop,
naturally gave some additional strength to the fears of the less
sanguine. If he was going to sell drapery, it was probable that a pale-
faced fellow like that would deal in showy and inferior articles--printed
cottons and muslins which would leave their dye in the wash-tub, jobbed
linen full of knots, and flannel that would soon look like gauze. If
grocery, then it was to be hoped that no mother of a family would trust
the teas of an untried grocer. Such things had been known in some
parishes as tradesmen going about canvassing for custom with cards in
their pockets: when people came from nobody knew where, there was no
knowing what they might do. It was a thousand pities that Mr. Moffat,
the auctioneer and broker, had died without leaving anybody to follow him
in the business, and Mrs. Cleve's trustee ought to have known better than
to let a shop to a stranger. Even the discovery that ovens were being
put up on the premises, and that the shop was, in fact, being fitted up
for a confection