“There!” she exclaimed; “I’ve doubted the miller’s eye.”

O’Gree laughed when he saw Waymark looking for an explanation.

“That’s a piece of Weymouth,” he remarked.  “Mrs. O’Gree comes from the south-west of England,” he added, leaning towards Casti.  “She’s constantly teaching me new and interesting things.  Now, if I was to spill the salt here—­”

He put his Ii and on the salt-cellar, as if to do so, but Sally rapped his knuckles with a fork.

“None of your nonsense, sir!  Give Mr. Casti some more meat, instead.”

It was a merry party.  The noise of talk grew so loud that it was only the keenness of habitual attention on Sally’s part which enabled her to observe that a customer was knocking on the counter.  She darted out, but returned with a disappointed look on her face.

“Pickles?” asked her husband, frowning.

Sally nodded.

“Now, look here, Waymark,” cried O’Gree, rising in indignation from his seat.  “Look here, Mr. Casti.  The one drop of bitterness in our cup is—­pickles; the one thing that threatens to poison our happiness is—­pickles.  We’re always being asked for pickles; just as if the people knew about it, and came on purpose!”

“Knew About what?” asked Waymark, in astonishment.

“Why, that we mayn’t sell ’em!  A few doors off there’s a scoundrel of a grocer.  Now, his landlord’s the same as ours, and when we took this shop there was one condition attached.  Because the grocer sells pickles, and makes a good thing of them, we had to undertake that, in that branch of commerce, we wouldn’t compete with him.  Pickles are forbidden.”

Waymark burst into a most unsympathetic roar of laughter, but with O’Gree the grievance was evidently a serious one, and it was some few moments before he recovered his equanimity.  Indeed it was not quite restored till the entrance of another customer, who purchased two ounces of butter.  When, in the dead silence which ensued, Sally was heard weighing out the order, O’Gree’s face beamed; and when there followed the chink of coins in the till, he brought his fist down with a triumphant crash upon the table.

When tea was over, O’Gree managed to get Waymark apart from the rest, and showed him a small photograph of Sally which had recently been taken.

“Sally’s great ambition,” he whispered, “is to be taken cabinet-size, and in a snow-storm.  You’ve seen the kind of thing in the shop-windows?  We’ll manage that before long, but this will do for the present.  You don’t see a face like that every day; eh, Waymark?”

Sally, her housewifery duly accomplished in the invisible regions, came back and sat by the fireside.  She had exchanged her work-a-day costume for one rather more ornate.  Noticeable was a delicate gold chain which hung about her neck, and Waymark smiled when he presently saw her take out her watch and seem to compare its time with that of the clock on the mantelpiece.  It was a wedding present from Ida.