BUYING A NEW CLOAK

Foster’s shop was the shop of Monkshaven.  It was kept by two Quaker brothers, who were now old men; and their father had kept it before them; probably his father before that.  People remembered it as an old-fashioned dwelling-house, with a sort of supplementary shop with unglazed windows projecting from the lower story.  These openings had long been filled with panes of glass that at the present day would be accounted very small, but which seventy years ago were much admired for their size.  I can best make you understand the appearance of the place by bidding you think of the long openings in a butcher’s shop, and then to fill them up in your imagination with panes about eight inches by six, in a heavy wooden frame.  There was one of these windows on each side the door-place, which was kept partially closed through the day by a low gate about a yard high.  Half the shop was appropriated to grocery; the other half to drapery, and a little mercery.  The good old brothers gave all their known customers a kindly welcome; shaking hands with many of them, and asking all after their families and domestic circumstances before proceeding to business.  They would not for the world have had any sign of festivity at Christmas, and scrupulously kept their shop open at that holy festival, ready themselves to serve sooner than tax the consciences of any of their assistants, only nobody ever came.  But on New Year’s Day they had a great cake, and wine, ready in the parlour behind the shop, of which all who came in to buy anything were asked to partake.  Yet, though scrupulous in most things, it did not go against the consciences of these good brothers to purchase smuggled articles.  There was a back way from the river-side, up a covered entry, to the yard-door of the Fosters, and a peculiar kind of knock at this door always brought out either John or Jeremiah, or if not them, their shopman, Philip Hepburn; and the same cake and wine that the excise officer’s wife might just have been tasting, was brought out in the back parlour to treat the smuggler.  There was a little locking of doors, and drawing of the green silk curtain that was supposed to shut out the shop, but really all this was done very much for form’s sake.  Everybody in Monkshaven smuggled who could, and every one wore smuggled goods who could, and great reliance was placed on the excise officer’s neighbourly feelings.

The story went that John and Jeremiah Foster were so rich that they could buy up all the new town across the bridge.  They had certainly begun to have a kind of primitive bank in connection with their shop, receiving and taking care of such money as people did not wish to retain in their houses for fear of burglars.  No one asked them for interest on the money thus deposited, nor did they give any; but, on the other hand, if any of their customers, on whose character they could depend, wanted a little advance, the Fosters, after due inquiries made, and in some