siness is merely a habit
with me. I am so accustomed to the habit that I could hardly live if
I relinquished it: but there's nothing doing, nothing doing. When that
uniform was worn,' pointing out towards the little Midshipman, 'then
indeed, fortunes were to be made, and were made. But competition,
competition--new invention, new invention--alteration, alteration--the
world's gone past me. I hardly know where I am myself, much less where
my customers are.

'Never mind 'em, Uncle!'

'Since you came home from weekly boarding-school at Peckham, for
instance--and that's ten days,' said Solomon, 'I don't remember more
than one person that has come into the shop.'

'Two, Uncle, don't you recollect? There was the man who came to ask for
change for a sovereign--'

'That's the one,' said Solomon.

'Why Uncle! don't you call the woman anybody, who came to ask the way to
Mile-End Turnpike?'

'Oh! it's true,' said Solomon, 'I forgot her. Two persons.'

'To be sure, they didn't buy anything,' cried the boy.

'No. They didn't buy anything,' said Solomon, quietly.

'Nor want anything,' cried the boy.

'No. If they had, they'd gone to another shop,' said Solomon, in the
same tone.

'But there were two of 'em, Uncle,' cried the boy, as if that were a
great triumph. 'You said only one.'

'Well, Wally,' resumed the old man, after a short pause: 'not being like
the Savages who came on Robinson Crusoe's Island, we can't live on a man
who asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires the way
to Mile-End Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone past me.
I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the
same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not
the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my
stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned
shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen
behind the time, and am too old to catch it again. Even the noise it
makes a long way ahead, confuses me.'

Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand.

'Therefore, Wally--therefore it is that I am anxious you should be early
in the busy world, and on the world's track. I am only the ghost of this
business--its substance vanished long ago; and when I die, its ghost
will be laid. As it is clearly no inheritance for you then, I have
thought it best to use for your advantage, almost the only fragmen