d behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his
narrow chest, his face agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers,
so that they only grew becomingly as low as his ears. His rather
large, grey moustache was brushed off his mouth. His hair, gone very
thin, was brushed frail and floating over his baldness. But still a
gentleman, still courteous, with a charming voice he suggested the
possibilities of a pad of green parrots' tail-feathers, or of a few
yards of pink-pearl trimming or of old chenille fringe. The women
would pinch the thick, exquisite old chenille fringe, delicate and
faded, curious to feel its softness. But they wouldn't give
threepence for it. Tapes, ribbons, braids, buttons, feathers,
jabots, bussels, appliques, fringes, jet-trimmings, bugle-trimmings,
bundles of old coloured machine-lace, many bundles of strange cord,
in all colours, for old-fashioned braid-patterning, ribbons with
H.M.S. Birkenhead, for boys' sailor caps--everything that nobody
wanted, did the women turn over and over, till they chanced on a
find. And James' quick eyes watched the slow surge of his flotsam,
as the pot boiled but did not boil away. Wonderful that he did not
think of the days when these bits and bobs were new treasures. But
he did not.

And at his side Miss Pinnegar quietly took orders for shirts,
discussed and agreed, made measurements and received instalments.

The shop was now only opened on Friday afternoons and evenings, so
every day, twice a day, James was seen dithering bare-headed and
hastily down the street, as if pressed by fate, to the Conservative
Club, and twice a day he was seen as hastily returning, to his
meals. He was becoming an old man: his daughter was a young woman:
but in his own mind he was just the same, and his daughter was a
little child, his wife a young invalid whom he must charm by some
few delicate attentions--such as the peeled apple.

At the club he got into more mischief. He met men who wanted to
extend a brickfield down by the railway. The brickfield was called
Klondyke. James had now a new direction to run in: down hill towards
Bagthorpe, to Klondyke. Big penny-daisies grew in tufts on the brink
of the yellow clay at Klondyke, yellow eggs-and-bacon spread their
midsummer mats of flower. James came home with clay smeared all over
him, discoursing brilliantly on grit and paste and presses and kilns
and stamps. He carried home a rough and pinkish brick, and gloated
over it. It wa