Yet he came hither with hopes.  One circumstance seemed to him especially favourable:  the shop was also a post-office, and no one could fail to see (it was put most impressively by the predecessor who sold him the business) how advantageous was this blending of public service with commercial interest; especially as there was no telegraphic work to make a skilled assistant necessary.  As a matter of course, people using the post-office would patronise the chemist; and a provincial chemist can add to his legitimate business sundry pleasant little tradings which benefit himself without provoking the jealousy of neighbour shopmen.  ’It will be your own fault, my dear sir, if you do not make a very good thing of it indeed.  The sole and sufficient explanation of—­of the decline during this last year or two is my shocking health.  I really have not been able to do justice to the business.’

Necessarily, Mr. Farmiloe entered into negotiation with the postal authorities; and it was with some little disappointment that he learnt how very modest could be his direct remuneration for the responsibilities and labours he undertook.  The Post-Office is a very shrewdly managed department of the public service; it has brought to perfection the art of obtaining maximum results with a minimum expenditure.  But Mr. Farmiloe remembered the other aspect of the matter; he would benefit so largely by this ill-paid undertaking that grumbling was foolish.  Moreover, the thing carried dignity with it; he served his Majesty, he served the nation.  And—­ha, ha!—­how very odd it would be to post one’s letters in one’s own post-office.  One might really get a good deal of amusement out of the thought, after business hours.  His age was eight-and-thirty.  For some years he had pondered matrimony, though without fixing his affections on any particular person.  It was plain, indeed, that he ought to marry.  Every tradesman is made more respectable by wedlock, and a chemist who, in some degree, resembles a medical man, seems especially to stand in need of the matrimonial guarantee.  Had it been feasible, Mr. Farmiloe would have brought a wife with him from the town where he had lived for the past few years, but he was in the difficult position of knowing not a single marriageable female to whom he could address himself with hope or with self-respect.  Natural shyness had always held him aloof from reputable women; he felt that he could not recommend himself to them—­he who had such an unlucky aptitude for saying the wrong word or keeping silence when speech was demanded.  With the men of his acquaintance he could relieve his sense of awkwardness and deficiency by becoming aggressive; in fact, he had a reputation for cantankerousness, for pugnacity, which kept most of his equals in some awe of him, and to perceive this was one solace amid many discontents.  Nicely dressed and well-spoken and good-looking women above the class of domestic servants he worshipped from afar, and only in vivacious moments pictured himself as the wooer of such a superior being.