"_Wolves_."
QUAIL SEED
"The outlook is not encouraging for us smaller businesses," said Mr.
Scarrick to the artist and his sister, who had taken rooms over his
suburban grocery store. "These big concerns are offering all sorts of
attractions to the shopping public which we couldn't afford to imitate,
even on a small scale--reading-rooms and play-rooms and gramophones and
Heaven knows what. People don't care to buy half a pound of sugar
nowadays unless they can listen to Harry Lauder and have the latest
Australian cricket scores ticked off before their eyes. With the big
Christmas stock we've got in we ought to keep half a dozen assistants
hard at work, but as it is my nephew Jimmy and myself can pretty well
attend to it ourselves. It's a nice stock of goods, too, if I could only
run it off in a few weeks time, but there's no chance of that--not unless
the London line was to get snowed up for a fortnight before Christmas. I
did have a sort of idea of engaging Miss Luffcombe to give recitations
during afternoons; she made a great hit at the Post Office entertainment
with her rendering of 'Little Beatrice's Resolve'."
"Anything less likely to make your shop a fashionable shopping centre I
can't imagine," said the artist, with a very genuine shudder; "if I were
trying to decide between the merits of Carlsbad plums and confected figs
as a winter dessert it would infuriate me to have my train of thought
entangled with little Beatrice's resolve to be an Angel of Light or a
girl scout.
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