THE KISS 195 



peeped through the bhnd, and I saw Moriarty and 

 Andy with a sheep between them. They were 

 trying to put it into one of the loose-boxes, and it 

 didn't seem to want to go. Now, when you are 

 trying to drive a sheep Hke that against its will it 

 bleats, doesn't it? " 



" I should think so." 



" Well, this sheep didn't bleat — it was muzzled." 



They had reached the post-office by this and Miss 

 Grimshaw stopped to put in her letters ; then she re- 

 membered that she required stamps and a packet 

 of hooks and eyes, so she left IVIr Dash wood to his 

 meditations in the street and entered the httle shop. 



It was a very small shop, that competed in a 

 spirited way with the Itahan warehouse. It sold 

 boots, too; hobnailed boots hung in hanks from 

 the ceihng, and a small but sprightly hnen-drapery 

 business went on behind a counter at right angles 

 to the counter that sold tinned salmon and tea. 



Chopping, who owned this emporium, was a 

 pale-faced man, consumptive and sycophantic, 

 with a horrible habit of washing his hands with 

 invisible soap when any of the carriage people of 

 Crowsnest entered his httle shop. This is a 

 desperately bad sign in an Enghshman; as a 

 symptom of mental and moral depravity it has 

 almost died out. In the early and mid- Victorian 

 age, in the era of httle shops and small hotels, 

 it was marked, but it lingers still here and there in 

 England, and when one meets with it it makes one 

 almost a convert to Sociahsm. 



