ared out a good deal--really, a
very great deal--and many women had bought what they didn't want, at
their own figure. Feverish but content, James shut the shop for the
last time. Next day, by eleven, he had removed all his belongings,
the door that connected the house with the shop was screwed up fast,
the grocer strolled in and looked round his bare extension, took the
key from James, and immediately set his boy to paste a new notice in
the window, tearing down all James's announcements. Poor James had
to run round, down Knarborough Road, and down Wellington Street as
far as the Livery Stable, then down long narrow passages, before he
could get into his own house, from his own shop.

But he did not mind. Every hour brought the first performance of his
Pleasure Palace nearer. He was satisfied with Mr. May: he had to
admit that he was satisfied with Mr. May. The Palace stood firm at
last--oh, it was so ricketty when it arrived!--and it glowed with a
new coat, all over, of dark-red paint, like ox-blood. It was
tittivated up with a touch of lavender and yellow round the door and
round the decorated wooden eaving. It had a new wooden slope up to
the doors--and inside, a new wooden floor, with red-velvet seats in
front, before the curtain, and old chapel-pews behind. The collier
youths recognized the pews.

"Hey! These 'ere's the pews out of the old Primitive Chapel."

"Sorry ah! We'n come ter hear t' parson."

Theme for endless jokes. And the Pleasure Palace was christened, in
some lucky stroke, Houghton's Endeavour, a reference to that
particular Chapel effort called the Christian Endeavour, where
Alvina and Miss Pinnegar both figured.

"Wheer art off, Sorry?"

"Lumley."

"Houghton's Endeavour?"

"Ah."

"Rotten."

So, when one laconic young collier accosted another. But we
anticipate.

Mr. May had worked hard to get a program for the first week. His
pictures were: "The Human Bird," which turned out to be a ski-ing
film from Norway, purely descriptive; "The Pancake," a humorous
film: and then his grand serial: "The Silent Grip." And then, for
Turns, his first item was Miss Poppy Traherne, a lady in innumerable
petticoats, who could whirl herself into anything you like, from an
arum lily in green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and
a cup-and-saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne. The next turn
was The Baxter Brothers, who ran up and down each other's backs and
up and down each other's fro