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"All right," said Zopyrus laughing. "Anything you like except a shop-keeper. So in three days we are off. I am glad I shall just have time to make sure of the satrap's little daughter, and to visit the grove of Cybele at last. Now, goodnight, Bartja; don't get up too early. What will Sappho say, if you come to her with pale cheeks?" The sun of a hot midsummer-day had risen on Naukratis.
In like manner, the humbler classes, the shop-keeper, the mechanic, and the artisan, spoke not unintelligibly of their altered condition, since the native nobility were their best customers, and taxation scarcely reached them. "But we are no longer a people now. The stranger rules us, the shackles are on our wrists; what can we do?"
These patient martyrs, whose business it had been to look after the home, now suffered the humiliation of having door after door closed to them and their children. Of a morning you might see them tramping through the snow from shop to shop trying to secure credit for the day. The strike would be over in a little while, they argued, but the struggling shop-keeper had his own to look after.
He thereupon ordered the shop-keeper to take his measure. He tried the coat on and looked himself over carefully, testing the quality and blowing upon the hair to see that none of it came out. Finally, heaving a deep sigh, he took it off. "The price is too high," he said. "If you could let me have it for fifteen rubles "
Captain M'Intyre, who, like many of his profession, looked down with infinite scorn on those citizen soldiers who had assumed arms without any professional title to bear them, rose with great reluctance, observing that he should not know what to say to Mr. Littlejohn; and that to see an old gouty shop-keeper attempting the exercise and duties of a private soldier, was really too ridiculous.
"Are there any men about the place?" she asked, changing the subject with disconcerting suddenness. I flushed slightly at the taunt. "N-no! miss," I replied, in my best shop-keeper tone, "sorry, but we are completely out of them." She must have detected the flavour of sarcasm, for her lips relaxed for the briefest moment, and a smile was born which showed two rows of even white teeth.
"She paused a moment, and then went slowly towards the door; lingered for a short time, and then turned to the man again. I then saw for the first time, for ten long years, her face. How thin and pale it was! how troubled its expression! But it was the face of our dear Constance. She did not look towards me; but turned again to the shop-keeper, and said,
In my native town there is a shop-keeper who, when he is out of any article called for, tells his customers to wait a moment while he sends the boy over to the warehouse, the 'warehouse' being the larger and more prosperous establishment of a rival just around the corner, and the boy never returns empty-handed. I shall have to imitate my worthy friend; so pardon me just a moment."
The shop-keeper was an elderly man with daughters of his own, and he had so often noticed this pale sad-looking young girl as she passed his window, that he recognized her countenance the moment she entered the shop; and when in a low timid voice she enquired if he would purchase the ring, he was satisfied that he was correct in his former conjecture, that she belonged to a family of former wealth and respectability.
"Truly," said he, "I look like a veritable shop-keeper, and he who takes me for any thing else, must be of a more political turn of mind than my host, Signor Montardo, the Prussiano." He turned and left the room to obtain the address of some merchants and a guide from his host. In spite of remonstrances Signer Montardo insisted on accompanying him.
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