those who take part in it. During the season the shopkeeper reaps his harvest of gold. There is one straight mile in Oxford Street along whose length an unfortunate man cannot buy a cigarette or a pipeful of tobacco, nor slake his thirst. Every window is filled with rags—with articles for the adornment of women.
It would be difficult to say in which line of activity Richard Brassard showed best his Napoleonic ability. When the high-price season began his windows were dreams of beauty. He appealed then to the fashionable woman. After that rich season ended with a great increase in his bank account, the windows blossomed out with figures in red and black, all goods marked down, and now the unfashionable women of the suburbs crowded round his counters in their thousands. It was a time of "no reasonable offer refused," and the crush was something terrific.
So well did Bendale do his work that the citadel of Brassard was surrounded by small forts before the latter had an inkling of what was going forward. It is true that here and there plate-glass windows were put in, in imitation of his own, but at these isolated specimens of enterprise Brassard merely laughed. The little people could not compete with him, either as a buyer or a seller, so he was not disturbed. At the beginning of the next high-price season the indefatigable Brassard himself attended to his luxurious windows, and by this
