Those two, without knowing or guessing it, were making history—­ the history of commerce.  They had no suspicion that they were the forces of the future insidiously at work to destroy what the forces of the past had created, but such was the case.  They were conscious merely of a desire to do their duty in the shop and to the shop; probably it had not even occurred to them that this desire, which each stimulated in the breast of the other, had assumed the dimensions of a passion.  It was ageing Mr. Povey, and it had made of Constance a young lady tremendously industrious and preoccupied.

Mr. Povey had recently been giving attention to the question of tickets.  It is not too much to say that Mr. Povey, to whom heaven had granted a minimum share of imagination, had nevertheless discovered his little parcel of imagination in the recesses of being, and brought it effectively to bear on tickets.  Tickets ran in conventional grooves.  There were heavy oblong tickets for flannels, shirting, and other stuffs in the piece; there were smaller and lighter tickets for intermediate goods; and there were diamond-shaped tickets (containing nothing but the price) for bonnets, gloves, and flimflams generally.  The legends on the tickets gave no sort of original invention.  The words ‘lasting,’ ‘durable,’ ‘unshrinkable,’ ‘latest,’ ‘cheap,’ ‘stylish,’ ‘novelty,’ ‘choice’ (as an adjective), ‘new,’ and ‘tasteful,’ exhausted the entire vocabulary of tickets.  Now Mr. Povey attached importance to tickets, and since he was acknowledged to be the best window-dresser in Bursley, his views were entitled to respect.  He dreamed of other tickets, in original shapes, with original legends.  In brief, he achieved, in regard to tickets, the rare feat of ridding himself of preconceived notions, and of approaching a subject with fresh, virginal eyes.  When he indicated the nature of his wishes to Mr. Chawner, the wholesale stationer who supplied all the Five Towns with shop-tickets, Mr. Chawner grew uneasy and worried; Mr. Chawner was indeed shocked.  For Mr. Chawner there had always been certain well-defined genera of tickets, and he could not conceive the existence of other genera.  When Mr. Povey suggested circular tickets—­tickets with a blue and a red line round them, tickets with legends such as ‘unsurpassable,’ ‘very dainty,’ or ‘please note,’ Mr. Chawner hummed and hawed, and finally stated that it would be impossible to manufacture these preposterous tickets, these tickets which would outrage the decency of trade.

If Mr. Povey had not happened to be an exceedingly obstinate man, he might have been defeated by the crass Toryism of Mr. Chawner.  But Mr. Povey was obstinate, and he had resources of ingenuity which Mr. Chawner little suspected.  The great, tramping march of progress was not to be impeded by Mr. Chawner.  Mr. Povey began to make his own tickets.  At first he suffered as all reformers and inventors suffer.  He used the internal surface of collar-boxes and ordinary