They talked about the details of the business, and presently Allchin asked what name was to be put up over the shop.

“I’ve thought of that,” answered Will.  “What do you say to—­ Jollyman?”

The assistant was delighted; he repeated the name a dozen times, snorting and choking with appreciation of the joke.  Next morning, they met again, and went together to look at the shop.  Here Allchin made great play with his valuable qualities.  He pointed out the errors and negligencies of the late Boxon, declared it a scandal that a business such as this should have been allowed to fall off, and was full of ingenious ideas for a brilliant opening.  Among other forms of inexpensive advertisement, he suggested that, for the first day, a band should be engaged to play in the front room over the shop, with the windows open; and he undertook to find amateur bandsmen who would undertake the job on very moderate terms.

Not many days elapsed before the old name had disappeared from the house front, giving place to that of Jollyman.  Whilst this was being painted up, Allchin stood on the opposite side of the way, watching delightedly.

“When I think as the name used to be Boxon,” he exclaimed to his employer, “why, I can’t believe as any money was ever made here.  Boxon!  Why, it was enough to drive customers away!  If you ever heard a worse name, sir, for a shopkeeper, I should be glad to be told of it.  But Jollyman!  Why, it’ll bring people from Putney, from Battersea, from who knows how far.  Jollyman’s Teas, Jollyman’s sugar —­can’t you hear ’em saying it, already?  It’s a fortune in itself, that name.  Why, sir, if a grocer called Boxon came at this moment, and offered to take me into partnership on half profits, I wouldn’t listen to him—­there!”

Naturally, all this did not pass without many a pang in Warburton’s sensitive spots.  He had set his face like brass, or tried to do so; but in the night season he could all but have shed tears of humiliation, as he tossed on his comfortless pillow.  The day was spent in visits to wholesale grocery establishments, in study of trade journals, m calculating innumerable petty questions of profit and loss.  When nausea threatened him:  when an all but horror of what lay before him assailed his mind; he thought fixedly of The Haws, and made a picture to himself of that peaceful little home devastated by his own fault.  And to think that all this sweat and misery arose from the need of gaining less than a couple of hundred pounds a year!  Life at The Haws, a life of refinement and goodness and tranquillity such as can seldom be found, demanded only that—­ a sum which the wealthy vulgar throw away upon the foolish amusement of an hour.  Warburton had a tumultuous mind in reflecting on these things; but the disturbance was salutary, bearing him through trials of nerve and patience and self-respect which he could not otherwise have endured.