had taught him the importance of shillings.  He had to remind himself that, if he was poor, his landlady was poorer still, and that in cheating him she did but follow the traditions of her class.  To debate an excess of sixpence for paraffin, of ninepence for bacon, would have made him flush and grind his teeth for hours afterwards; but he noticed the effect upon himself of the new habit of niggardliness—­how it disposed him to acerbity of temper.  No matter how pure the motive, a man cannot devote his days to squeezing out pecuniary profits without some moral detriment.  Formerly this woman, Mrs. Wick, with her gimlet eyes, and her leech lips, with her spyings and eavesdroppings, with her sour civility, her stinted discharge of obligations, her pilferings and mendacities, would have rather amused than annoyed him.  “Poor creature, isn’t it a miserable as well as a sordid life.  Let her have her pickings, however illegitimate, and much good may they do her.”  Now he too often found himself regarding her with something like animosity, whereby, to be sure, he brought himself to the woman’s level.  Was it not a struggle between him and her for a share of life’s poorest comforts?  When he looked at it in that light, his cheeks were hot.

A tradesman must harden himself.  Why, in the early months, it cost him a wrench somewhere to take coppers at the counter from very poor folk who perhaps made up the odd halfpenny in farthings, and looked at the coins reluctantly as they laid them down.  More than once, he said, “Oh never mind the ha’penny,” and was met with a look—­not of gratitude but of blank amazement.  Allchin happened to be a witness of one such incident, and, in the first moment of privacy, ventured a respectful yet a most energetic, protest.  “It’s the kindness of your ’eart, sir, and if anybody knows how much of that you have, I’m sure it’s me, and I ought to be the last to find fault with it.  But that’ll never do behind the counter, sir, never!  Why, just think.  The profit on what that woman bought was just three farthings.”  He detailed the computation.  “And there you’ve been and given her a whole ha’penny, so that you’ve only one blessed farthing over on the whole transaction!  That ain’t business, sir; that’s charity; and Jollyman’s ain’t a charitable institution.  You really must not, sir.  It’s unjust to yourself.”  And Will, with an uneasy shrug, admitted his folly.  But he was ashamed to the core.  Only in the second half-year did he really accustom himself to disregard a customer’s poverty.  He had thought the thing out, faced all its most sordid aspects.  Yes, he was fighting with these people for daily bread; he and his could live only if his three farthings of profit were plucked out of that toil worn hand of charwoman or sempstress.  Accept the necessity, and think no more of it.  He was a man behind the counter; he saw face to face the people who supported him.  With this exception had not things been just the same when he sat in the counting-house at the sugar refinery?  It was an unpleasant truth, which appearances had formerly veiled from him.