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It was soon manifest the shop paid only in the least exacting sense,
and Miriam did not conceal her opinion that he ought to bestir himself
and "do things," though what he was to do was hard to say. You see,
when you have once sunken your capital in a shop you do not very
easily get it out again. If customers will not come to you cheerfully
and freely the law sets limits upon the compulsion you may exercise.
You cannot pursue people about the streets of a watering place,
compelling them either by threats or importunity to buy flannel
trousers. Additional sources of income for a tradesman are not always
easy to find. Wintershed at the bicycle and gramaphone shop to the
right, played the organ in the church, and Clamp of the toy shop was
pew opener and so forth, Gambell, the greengrocer, waited at table and
his wife cooked, and Carter, the watchmaker, left things to his wife
while he went about the world winding clocks, but Mr. Polly had none
of these arts, and wouldn't, in spite of Miriam's quietly persistent
protests, get any other. And on summer evenings he would ride his
bicycle about the country, and if he discovered a sale where there
were books he would as often as not waste half the next day in going
again to acquire a job lot of them haphazard, and bring them home tied
about with a string, and hide them from Miriam under the counter in
the shop. That is a heartbreaking thing for any wife with a serious
investigatory turn of mind to discover. She was always thinking of
burning these finds, but her natural turn for economy prevailed with
her.
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