Australian Tales - Setis

Widow Giles's Little Grocery Shop.
A GLANCE at Widow Giles's little shop would suffice to convince an
observant person, who knew anything about shopkeeping, that she was a
thriving trader. The stock was well selected and nicely kept; there was a
display of taste as well as tidiness in the arrangement of the goods on the
shelves, and there was no litter anywhere. Her counter was always clean,
and the brass scales upon it shone like sovereigns. No one ever saw an
unsightly accumulation of scraps of bacon, fragments of cheese, or heads
and tails of dried fish wasting on the corner of her counter, for she never
allowed “odds and ends,” as she called them, to collect, well knowing
that they did not improve by keeping, and she usually sold them at a
reduction in price, to get quit of them. If you sent to her shop for a pat of
fresh butter, you might be sure of having it free from dust, for she always
kept a clean damp cloth over her butter dish. If weevils invaded her rice
bag, or her pearl barley drawer, she got her boy Billy — when he came
home from school — to sift them out into a tub of water, in the backyard.
The mice never had a chance of nibbling at her mould candles, and
soiling them at the same time; for she always kept a lid on her candlebox.
In fact, there were not many mice to be seen in her house, for there
was no garbage to entice them, and food of all sorts was usually kept
beyond their reach; besides, the cat kept a sharper look after them than
even her mistress did; and mice very soon desert a house where they see
such unmistakable signs that they are not welcome in it.
Mrs. Giles had a drawer under her counter for waste paper which she
used for wrapping up rough articles. No one ever saw her wastefully tear
a piece off a large sheet of new paper, to wrap up a pound of candles, or
soap, or a red herring; in short, she was an economical woman, and
though she certainly did not make large profits out of her little shop, she
made a comfortable living, and was enabled to keep her children
decently clad and to give them a suitable education, which was the height
of her ambition. She could get credit at more than one wholesale house in
Sydney; but she had a wholesome dread of going far into debt, and
usually bought her little stock with ready money; consequently she often
got better bargains than some of the neighbouring shopkeepers, who
bought on credit, and were not very punctual in their payments.
Widow Giles was careful, though not parsimonious; she was fair and
just in all her dealings, and her neighbours had confidence in her. She