“Canada?  Do they like their life out there?”

“They seem to enjoy it, on the whole.  But it evidently isn’t an easy life.”

“Not many kinds of life are.” rejoined the grocer.  “But the open air —­the liberty—­”

“Oh yes, that must be the good side of it,” assented Bertha.

“On a morning like this—­”

Mr. Jollyman’s eyes wandered to a gleam of sunny sky visible through the shop window.  The girl’s glance passed quickly over his features, and she was on the point of saying something; but discretion interposed.  Instead of the too personal remark, she repeated her thanks, bent her head with perhaps a little more than the wonted graciousness, and left the shop.  The grocer stood looking toward the doorway.  His countenance had fallen.  Something of bitterness showed in the hardness of his lips.

CHAPTER 22

Just a year since the day when Allchin’s band played at the first floor windows above Jollyman’s new grocery stores.

From the very beginning, business promised well.  He and his assistant had plenty of work; there was little time for meditation; when not serving customers, he was busy with practical details of grocerdom, often such as he had not foreseen, matters which called for all his energy and ingenuity.  A gratifying aspect of the life was that, day by day, he handled his returns in solid cash.  Jollyman’s gave no credit; all goods had to be paid for on purchase or delivery; and to turn out the till when the shop had closed—­to make piles of silver and mountains of copper, with a few pieces of gold beside them—­put a cheering end to the day’s labour.  Warburton found himself clinking handfuls of coin, pleased with the sound.  Only at the end of the first three months, the close of the year, did he perceive that much less than he had hoped of the cash taken could be reckoned as clear profit.  He had much to learn in the cunning of retail trade, and it was a kind of study that went sorely against the grain with him.  Happily, at Christmas time came Norbert Franks (whom Will had decided not to take into his confidence) and paid his debt of a hundred and twenty pounds.  This set things right for the moment.  Will was able to pay a three-and-a-half per cent. dividend to his mother and sister, and to fare ahead hopefully.

He would rather not have gone down to The Haws that Christmastide, but feared that his failure to do so might seem strange.  The needful prevarication cost him so many pangs that he came very near to confessing the truth; he probably would have done so, had not his mother been ailing, and, it seemed to him, little able to bear the shock of such a disclosure.  So the honest deception went on.  Will was supposed to be managing a London branch of the Applegarth business.  Great expenditure on advertising had to account for the smallness of the dividend at first.  No one less likely than the ladies at The Haws to make trouble