“Well, it happens,” said Warburton, “that it is the grocery business I’m thinking about.”

“You, sir?” gasped Mrs. Hopper.

“I think I shall take Boxon’s shop.”

“You, sir?  Take a grocer’s shop?—­You mean, you’d put Allchin in to manage it?”

“No, I don’t, Mrs. Hopper,” replied Will, smiling mechanically.  “I have more than my own living to earn; other people are dependent upon me, so I must make as much money as possible.  I can t afford to pay a manager.  I shall go behind the counter myself, and Allchin, if he cares for the place, shall be my assistant.”

The good woman could find no words to express her astonishment.

“Suppose you have a word with Allchin, and send him to see me this evening?  I say again, there’s no need to talk about the thing to anybody else.  We’ll just keep it quiet between us.”

“You can depend upon me, sir,” declared Mrs. Hopper.  “But did you hever!  It’s come upon me so sudden like.  And what’ll Allchin say!  Why, he’ll think I’m having a game with him.”

To this point had Will Warburton brought himself, urged by conscience and fear.  Little by little, since the afternoon when he gazed at Boxon’s closed shop, had this purpose grown in his mind, until he saw it as a possibility—­a desirability—­a fact.  By shopkeeping, he might hope to earn sufficient for supply of the guaranteed income to his mother and sister, and at the same time be no man’s servant.  His acquaintance with Allchin enabled him to disregard his lack of grocery experience; with Allchin for an assistant, he would soon overcome initial difficulties.  Only to Godfrey Sherwood had he communicated his project.  “What difference is there,” he wrote, “between selling sugar from an office in Whitechapel, and selling it from behind a counter in Fulham Road?” And Sherwood—­who was still reposing in North Wales—­wrote a long, affectionate, admiring reply.  “You are splendid!  What energy!  What courage!  I could almost say that I don’t regret my criminal recklessness, seeing that it has given the occasion for such a magnificent display of character.”  He added, “Of course it will be only for a short time.  Even if the plans I am now working out—­ details shortly—­come to nothing (a very unlikely thing), I am sure to recover my ten thousand pounds in a year or so.”—­“Of course,” he wrote in a postscript, “I breathe no word of it to any mortal.”

This letter—­so are we made—­did Warburton good.  It strengthened him in carrying through the deception of his relatives and of Mr. Turnbull, for he saw himself as splendide mendax.  In Sherwood’s plans and assurances he had no shadow of faith, but Sherwood’s admiration was worth having, and it threw a gilding upon the name of grocer.  Should he impart the secret to Norbert Franks?  That question he could not decide just yet.  In any case, he should tell no one else; all other acquaintances must be content—­if they cared to inquire—­with vague references to an “agency,” or something of the sort.  Neither his mother nor Jane ever came to London for them, his change of address to a poorer district would have no significance.  In short, London, being London, it seemed perfectly feasible to pass his life in a grocer’s shop without the fact becoming known to any one from whom he wished to conceal it.