example, he suddenly heaped up piles of hats, trimmed and untrimmed,
the weirdest, sauciest, most screaming shapes. Woodhouse enjoyed
itself that night.
And all the time, in her quiet, polite, think-the-more fashion Miss
Pinnegar waited on the people, showing them considerable forbearance
and just a tinge of contempt. She became very tired those
evenings--her hair under its invisible hairnet became flatter, her
cheeks hung down purplish and mottled. But while James stood she
stood. The people did not like her, yet she influenced them. And the
stock slowly wilted, withered. Some was scrapped. The shop seemed to
have digested some of its indigestible contents.
James accumulated sixpences in a miserly fashion. Luckily for her
work-girls, Miss Pinnegar took her own orders, and received payments
for her own productions. Some of her regular customers paid her a
shilling a week--or less. But it made a small, steady income. She
reserved her own modest share, paid the expenses of her department,
and left the residue to James.
James had accumulated sixpences, and made a little space in his
shop. He had desisted from "creations." Time now for a new flight.
He decided it was better to be a manufacturer than a tradesman. His
shop, already only half its original size, was again too big. It
might be split once more. Rents had risen in Woodhouse. Why not cut
off another shop from his premises?
No sooner said than done. In came the architect, with whom he had
played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one
good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left
a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present
space. But as we age we dwindle.
More hammering and alterations, and James found himself cooped in a
long, long narrow shop, very dark at the back, with a high oblong
window and a door that came in at a pinched corner. Next door to him
was a cheerful new grocer of the cheap and florid type. The new
grocer whistled "Just Like the Ivy," and shouted boisterously to his
shop-boy. In his doorway, protruding on James' sensitive vision, was
a pyramid of sixpence-halfpenny tins of salmon, red, shiny tins with
pink halved salmons depicted, and another yellow pyramid of
four-pence-halfpenny tins of pineapple. Bacon dangled in pale rolls
_almost_ over James' doorway, whilst straw and paper, redolent of
cheese, lard, and stale eggs filtered through the threshold.
This was coming down in the world, with a vengeance. But what James
lost downstairs he tried to recover upstairs. Heaven knows what he
would have done, but for Miss Pinnegar. She kept her own work-rooms
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