notice, giving full programs. And beneath these a broad-letter
notice announced, in green letters on a yellow ground: "Final and
Ultimate Clearance Sale at Houghton's, Knarborough Road, on Friday,
September 30th. Come and Buy Without Price."
James was in his eye-holes. He collected all his odds and ends from
every corner of Manchester House. He sorted them in heaps, and
marked the heaps in his own mind. And then he let go. He pasted up
notices all over the window and all over the shop: "Take what you
want and Pay what you Like."
He and Miss Pinnegar kept shop. The women flocked in. They turned
things over. It nearly killed James to take the prices they offered.
But take them he did. But he exacted that they should buy one
article at a time. "One piece at a time, if you don't mind," he
said, when they came up with their three-a-penny handfuls. It was
not till later in the evening that he relaxed this rule.
Well, by eleven o'clock he had cleared out a good deal--really, a
very great deal--and many women had bought what they didn't want, at
their own figure. Feverish but content, James shut the shop for the
last time. Next day, by eleven, he had removed all his belongings,
the door that connected the house with the shop was screwed up fast,
the grocer strolled in and looked round his bare extension, took the
key from James, and immediately set his boy to paste a new notice in
the window, tearing down all James's announcements. Poor James had
to run round, down Knarborough Road, and down Wellington Street as
far as the Livery Stable, then down long narrow passages, before he
could get into his own house, from his own shop.
But he did not mind. Every hour brought the first performance of his
Pleasure Palace nearer. He was satisfied with Mr. May: he had to
admit that he was satisfied with Mr. May. The Palace stood firm at
last--oh, it was so ricketty when it arrived!--and it glowed with a
new coat, all over, of dark-red paint, like ox-blood. It was
tittivated up with a touch of lavender and yellow round the door and
round the decorated wooden eaving. It had a new wooden slope up to
the doors--and inside, a new wooden floor, with red-velvet seats in
front, before the curtain, and old chapel-pews behind. The collier
youths recognized the pews.
"Hey! These 'ere's the pews out of the old Primitive Chapel."
"Sorry ah! We'n come ter hear t' parson."
Theme for endless jokes. And the Pleasure Palace was christened, in
some lucky stroke, Houghton's Endeavour, a reference to that
particular Chapel effort called the Christian Endeavour, where
Alvina and Miss Pinnegar both figured.
<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>