against him, with a soft, heavy, silent tenacity that would have
beaten stronger men than James. But his strength lay in his
pliability. He rummaged in the empty lofts, and among the discarded
machinery. He rigged up the engines afresh, bought two new machines,
and started an elastic department, making elastic for garters and
for hat-chins.
He was immensely proud of his first cards of elastic, and saw Dame
Fortune this time fast in his yielding hands. But, becoming used to
disillusionment, he almost welcomed it. Within six months he
realized that every inch of elastic cost him exactly sixty per cent.
more than he could sell it for, and so he scrapped his new
department. Luckily, he sold one machine and even gained two pounds
on it.
After this, he made one last effort. This was hosiery webbing, which
could be cut up and made into as-yet-unheard-of garments. Miss
Pinnegar kept her thumb on this enterprise, so that it was not much
more than abortive. And then James left her alone.
Meanwhile the shop slowly churned its oddments. Every Thursday
afternoon James sorted out tangles of bits and bobs, antique
garments and occasional finds. With these he trimmed his window, so
that it looked like a historical museum, rather soiled and scrappy.
Indoors he made baskets of assortments: threepenny, sixpenny,
ninepenny and shilling baskets, rather like a bran pie in which
everything was a plum. And then, on Friday evening, thin and alert
he hovered behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his
narrow chest, his face agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers,
so that they only grew becomingly as low as his ears. His rather
large, grey moustache was brushed off his mouth. His hair, gone very
thin, was brushed frail and floating over his baldness. But still a
gentleman, still courteous, with a charming voice he suggested the
possibilities of a pad of green parrots' tail-feathers, or of a few
yards of pink-pearl trimming or of old chenille fringe. The women
would pinch the thick, exquisite old chenille fringe, delicate and
faded, curious to feel its softness. But they wouldn't give
threepence for it. Tapes, ribbons, braids, buttons, feathers,
jabots, bussels, appliqués, fringes, jet-trimmings, bugle-trimmings,
bundles of old coloured machine-lace, many bundles of strange cord,
in all colours, for old-fashioned braid-patterning, ribbons with
H.M.S. Birkenhead, for boys' sailor caps--everything that nobody
wanted, did the women turn over and over, till they chanced on a
find. And James' quick eyes watched the slow surge of his flotsam,
as the pot boiled but did not boil away. Wonderful that he did not
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