What luck!
The shop was advantageously placed at a street corner. Twelve feet of
fronting on the King's Road, and more than half that amount on the side
street, exposed to every view wall papers and stained glass designs. The
dwelling-house was over the shop; the shop entrance faced the kerb in the
King's Road.
The Bingleys were Dissenters. They were ugly, and exacted the uttermost
farthing from their customers and their workpeople. Mrs. Bingley was a
tall, gaunt woman, with little grey ringlets on either side of her face.
She spoke in a sour, resolute voice, when she came down in a wrapper to
superintend the cooking. On Sundays she wore a black satin, fastened with
a cameo brooch, and round her neck a long gold chain. Then her manners
were lofty, and when her husband called "Mother," she answered testily,
"Don't keep on mothering me." She frequently stopped him to settle his
necktie or collar. All the week he wore the same short jacket; on Sundays
he appeared in an ill-fitting frock-coat. His long upper lip was clean
shaven, but under his chin there grew a ring of discoloured hair, neither
brown nor red, but the neutral tint that hair which does not turn grey
acquires. When he spoke he opened his mouth wide, and seemed quite
unashamed of the empty spaces and the three or four yellow fangs that
remained.
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