362 SKETCHES IN PROSE. 



overcome with the effort, lapse into lethargic silence. As the 

 custom of these gentry never amounted to anything, the store- 

 keeper always felt aggrieved by their presence, and doubtless 

 often wished they were in some other building — say the oppo- 

 sition store, for instance — with a successful Guy Fawkes run- 

 ning a gunpowder plot in the basement ! And yet he was not 

 to blame for wishing it; for what more suitable food for 

 powder than a store loafer ? 



But at the nightly soirees the house was crowded. Then 

 came the patrons of the store far and near. Some came for 

 goods, some for the mail, some to talk and some to hear 

 others talk, and all more or less to loaf. There is the sturdy 

 'Squire, whose word, as befitted his office, was law; the 

 shrewd farmer, and thrifty mechanic. There is the hen- 

 pecked husband, who fled from his home as the shades of 

 night drew on apace to the congenial society at the store. 

 (That is he among the forks and shovels in a gloomy corner, 

 smoking a mild cigar.) There are the butcher, the baker 

 and, if the trade were not an extinct one, the candlestick 

 maker, the lively apprentice and farmer lads of various ages. 

 The married members of this nightly-meeting coterie have 

 left their homes as soon as the evening meal was gulped 

 down, to just " slip down to the corner to hear the news." 

 Their day's work over they leave the wife, whose work is 

 never done, to wash the supper dishes, soothe the cross chil- 

 dren and put them to bed, and then pass the evening darn- 

 ing stockings and pondering on those long-passed days when 

 it would have been rank heresy to have believed that John 

 would ever desert her for the coarse attractions of the society 

 found at night at the cross-roads store. 



Mark those two lads on the grocery counter, in rather too 

 close propinquit}^ to the powder magazine, considering they 

 are smoking. One of them is the son of the village doctor, 

 who has sent him to the store for some groceries, with strict 



