oll's" (as it was still called), the one good historic shop left in
Luke's Square. The onslaught of Wason had alarmed him, though he
had pretended to ignore it. But he was delectably reassured by
this heavenly incident of the representative of one of his most
distinguished customers coming into the shop and deliberately choosing
to buy preserved pineapple from him at 8-1/2d. when it could be got
thirty yards away for 7 1/2d. Rachel read his thoughts plainly.
She knew well enough that she had done rather a fine thing, and her
demeanour showed it. Ted Malkin enveloped the tin in suitable paper.

"Sure there's nothing else?"

"Not at this counter."

He gave her the tin, smiled, and as he turned to the next waiting
customer, called out--

"Singapore Delicious, eight and a half pence."

It was rather a poor affair, that tin--a declension from the great
days of Mrs. Maldon's married life, when she spent freely, knowing
naught of her husband's income except that it was large and elastic.
In those days she would buy a real pineapple, entire, once every three
weeks or so, costing five, six, seven, or eight shillings--gorgeous
and spectacular fruit. Now she might have pineapple every day if she
chose, but it was not quite the same pineapple. She affected to like
it, she did like it, but the difference between the old pineapple and
the new was the saddening difference, for Mrs. Maldon's secret heart,
between the great days and the paltry, facile convenience of the
twentieth century.

It was to his aunt, who presided over the opposite side of the shop,
including the cash-desk, that Ted Malkin proclaimed in a loud voice
the amounts of purchases on his own side. Miss Malkin was a virgin of
fifty-eight years' standing, with definite and unchangeable ideas on
every subject on earth or in heaven except her own age. As Rachel,
followed by Louis Fores, crossed the shop, Miss Malkin looked at them
and closed her lips, and lowered her eyelids, and the upper part of
her body seemed to curve slightly, with the sinuosity of a serpent--a
strange, significant movement, sometimes ill described as "bridling."

The total effect was as though Miss Malkin had suddenly clicked the
shutters down on all the windows of her soul and was spying at Rachel
and Louis Fores through a tiny concealed orifice in the region of her
eye. It was nothing to Miss Malkin that Rachel on that night of all
nights had come in to buy Singapore Delicious Chunks at 8-1