imness. Her boots, at this
moment unseen of any, fitted her feet, as her feet fitted her body. Her
hands were especially good. There are not many ladies, interested in
their own graces, who would not have envied her such seals to her
natural patent of ladyhood. Her speech and manners corresponded with
her person and dress; they were direct and simple, in tone and
inflection, those of one at peace with herself. Neatness was more
notable in her than grace, but grace was not absent; good breeding was
more evident than delicacy, yet delicacy was there; and unity was plain
throughout.

George went back to his own side of the shop, jumped the counter, put
the cover on the box he had left open with a bang, and shoved it into
its place as if it had been the backboard of a cart, shouting as he did
so to a boy invisible, to make haste and put up the shutters. Mary left
the shop by a door on the inside of the counter, for she and her father
lived in the house; and, as soon as the shop was closed, George went
home to the villa his father had built in the suburbs.

CHAPTER II.

CUSTOMERS.

The next day was Saturday, a busy one at the shop. From the neighboring
villages and farms came customers not a few; and ladies, from the
country-seats around, began to arrive as the hours went on. The whole
strength of the establishment was early called out. Busiest in serving
was the senior partner, Mr. Turnbull. He was a stout, florid man, with
a bald crown, a heavy watch-chain of the best gold festooned across the
wide space between waistcoat-button-hole and pocket, and a large
hemispheroidal carbuncle on a huge fat finger, which yet was his little
one. He was close-shaved, double-chinned, and had cultivated an
ordinary smile to such an extraordinary degree that, to use the common
hyperbole, it reached from ear to ear. By nature he was good-tempered
and genial; but, having devoted every mental as well as physical
endowment to the making of money, what few drops of spiritual water
were in him had to go with the rest to the turning of the mill-wheel
that ground the universe into coin. In his own eyes he was a strong
churchman, but the only sign of it visible to others was the strength
of his contempt for dissenters--which, however, excepting his partner
and Mary, he showed only to church-people; a dissenter's money being,
as he often remarked, when once in his till, as good as the best
churchman's.

To the receptive eye he was a s