Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/695

 . 15, 1860.] 



Golden Legend which was inscribed in long, slim characters upon its front;—“Moore’s Establishment for the Sale of Trimmings and Work.” The last word, “work,” was typical of her origin and experience. It was a provincialism which had stuck to her in language, a reality which had always been present to her. When she was a child in bonnie Yorkshire, running wild among the crags and fells of Rombald’s moor, or wading in the clear waters of the Wharfe, as it brawled among the pebbly shallows beneath the woods of Middleton, “work,” in her vocabulary, meant muslin work and embroidery; when adverse circumstances had brought her to London, with her mother and young sister, “work” put on its hardest and most earnest meaning. She laboured hard as an apprentice and assistant, and might have remained all her life a dressmaker had it not been that she was too blunt of speech and too independent in manner. She wished to be her own mistress, and so, by much pinching and saving, she had just succeeded in getting together a scanty, in truth, a paltry stock. The paint and gilding were yet fresh and painfully new to her, because they showed that her shop was, as she styled it, an upstart, when she would rather that it had had that respectability and honour which age gives to establishments as well as to men.

She was sitting, busy at her work, one October afternoon, wearily and despondingly looking for customers, when her attention was attracted by a very stout man, who was examining the front of her shop. He cast rapid glances up at the superscription, then across the window and round to the door. He then walked to the window, which he seemed to cover from side to side, and peered into the shop, and ran his eye over the shelves and stock. He then muttered something with a rapid movement of his lips, and darted off for a few yards. By and by he returned and stood at the door. Miss Moore put down her work and stood up to attend to him if he came in. This seemed to decide him, for he bounced in as though forcibly impelled from behind, and hurried out the words, “I say, lass, ha’ ye any shirt-buttons?” The ring—the flavour of the expression was familiar to her; was such as in her childhood she had been accustomed to, and, coming upon her unexpectedly, it carried her thoughts back to her father’s home and her tongue to its early utterances. A flushing smile of joy beamed on her face as she replied, “Aye, sir, I have.”

“Then wilt thou sew us one on here?” rejoined her customer, as he stretched out his arm, pulled back his coat, and showed that a button was wanting on his wristband.