One morning Mr Enoch Blurt sat on a high stool in his brother’s shop, with his elbows on a screened desk, his chin in his hands, and a grim smile on his lips.

 

The shop was a peculiar one. It had somewhat the aspect of an old curiosity shop, but the predominance of stuffed birds gave it a distinctly ornithological flavour. Other stuffed creatures were there, however, such as lizards, frogs, monkeys, etcetera, all of which straddled in attitudes more or less unlike nature, while a few wore expressions of astonishment quite in keeping with their circumstances.

 

“Here am I,” soliloquised Mr Blurt with a touch of bitterness, “in the position of a shop-boy, in possession of a shop towards which I entertain feelings of repugnance, seeing that it has twice ruined my poor brother, and in regard to the details of which I know absolutely nothing. I had fancied I had reached the lowest depths of misfortune when I became a ruined diamond-merchant, but this is a profounder deep.”

 

“Here’s the doctor a-comin’ down-stairs, sir,” said an elderly female, protruding her head from the back shop, and speaking in a stage-whisper.

 

“Very well, Mrs Murridge, let him come,” said Mr Blurt recklessly.

 

He descended from the stool, as the doctor entered the shop looking very grave. Every expression, save that of deep anxiety, vanished from Mr Blurt’s face.

 

“My brother is worse?” he said quickly.

 

“Not worse,” replied the doctor, “but his case is critical. Everything will depend on his mind being kept at ease. He has taken it into his head that his business is going to wreck while he lies there unable to attend to it, and asked me earnestly if the shop had been opened. I told him I’d step down and inquire.”

 

“Poor Fred!” murmured his brother sadly; “he has too good reason to fancy his business is going to wreck, with or without his attendance, for I find that very little is doing, and you can see that the entire stock isn’t worth fifty pounds—if so much. The worst of it is that his boy, who used to assist him, absconded yesterday with the contents of the till, and there is no one now to look after it.”

 

“That’s awkward. We must open the shop how ever, for it is all-important that his mind should be kept quiet. Do you know how to open it, Mr Blurt?”

 

Poor Mr Blurt looked helplessly at the closed shutters, through a hole in one of which the morning sun was streaming. Turning round he encountered the deeply solemn gaze of an owl which stood on a shelf at his elbow.

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