Friends I Have Made. Fenn George Manville

people to deal with too – them as have come straightforward, and told me they couldn’t keep up their payments, and asked me to take their machine back, when I’d allow them as much as I thought fair, and ’twould be an end of a pleasant transaction.

      The way I’ve been bitten though, by some folks, has made me that case-hardened that sometimes I’ve wondered whether I’d got any heart left, and the wife’s had to interfere, telling me I’ve been spoiled with prosperity, and grown unfeeling.

      It was she made me give way about Ruth, for one day, after having had my bristles all set up by finding out that three good sound machines, by best makers, had gone nobody knew where, who should come into the shop but a lady-like woman in very shabby widow’s weeds. She wanted a machine for herself and daughter to learn, and said she had heard that I would take the money by instalments. Now just half-an-hour before, by our shop clock, I had made a vow that I’d give up all that part of the trade, and I was very rough with her – just as I am when I’m cross – and said, “No.”

      “But you will if the lady gives security,” says my wife hastily.

      The poor woman gave such a woe-begone look at us that it made me more out of temper than ever, for I could feel that if I stopped I should have to let her have one at her own terms. And so it was; for, there, if I didn’t let her have a first-class machine, as good as new, she only paying seven and six down, and undertaking to pay half-a-crown a week, and no more security than nothing!

      To make it worse, too, if I didn’t send the thing home without charge! – Luke going with it, for he was back at home now keeping my books, being grown into a fine young fellow of five-and-twenty; and I sat and growled the whole of the rest of the day, calling myself all the weak-minded idiots under the sun, and telling the wife that business was going to the dogs, and I should be ruined.

      “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom,” she said.

      “So I am,” says I. “I didn’t think I could be such a fool.”

      “Such a fool as to do a good kind action to one who was evidently a lady born, and come down in the world!”

      “Yes,” I says, “to living in Bennett’s Place, where I’ve sunk no less than ten machines in five years.”

      “Yes,” says the wife, “and cleared hundreds of pounds. Tom, I’m ashamed of you – you a man with twenty workmen busy upstairs, a couple of thousand pounds’ worth of stock, and in the bank – ”

      “Hold your tongue, will you!” I said roughly, and went out into the shop to try and work it all off.

      Luke came back just after, looking very strange, and I was at him directly.