days of Houghton's Great Sales began. Houghton's Great Bargain
Events were really events. After some years of hanging on, he let go
splendidly. He marked down his prints, his chintzes, his dimities
and his veilings with a grand and lavish hand. Bang went his blue
pencil through 3/11, and nobly he subscribed 1/0-3/4. Prices fell
like nuts. A lofty one-and-eleven rolled down to six-three, 1/6
magically shrank into 4-3/4d, whilst good solid prints exposed
themselves at 3-3/4d per yard.
Now this was really an opportunity. Moreover the goods, having
become a little stale during their years of ineffectuality, were
beginning to approximate to the public taste. And besides, good
sound stuff it was, no matter what the pattern. And so the little
Woodhouse girls went to school in petties and drawers made of
material which James had destined for fair summer dresses: petties
and drawers of which the little Woodhouse girls were ashamed, for
all that. For if they should chance to turn up their little skirts,
be sure they would raise a chorus among their companions: "Yah-h-h,
yer've got Houghton's threp'ny draws on!"
All this time James Houghton walked on air. He still saw the Fata
Morgana snatching his fabrics round her lovely form, and pointing
him to wealth untold. True, he became also Superintendent of the
Sunday School. But whether this was an act of vanity, or whether it
was an attempt to establish an Entente Cordiale with higher powers,
who shall judge.
Meanwhile his wife became more and more an invalid; the little
Alvina was a pretty, growing child. Woodhouse was really impressed
by the sight of Mrs. Houghton, small, pale and withheld, taking a
walk with her dainty little girl, so fresh in an ermine tippet and a
muff. Mrs. Houghton in shiny black bear's-fur, the child in the
white and spotted ermine, passing silent and shadowy down the
street, made an impression which the people did not forget.
But Mrs. Houghton had pains at her heart. If, during her walk, she
saw two little boys having a scrimmage, she had to run to them with
pence and entreaty, leaving them dumfounded, whilst she leaned blue
at the lips against a wall. If she saw a carter crack his whip over
the ears of the horse, as the horse laboured uphill, she had to
cover her eyes and avert her face, and all her strength left her.
So she stayed more and more in her room, and the child was given to
the charge of a governess. Miss Frost was a handsome, vigorous young
woman of about thirty years of age, with grey-white hair and
gold-rimmed spectacles. The white hair was not at all tragical: it
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