Only at the end of the first three months, the close of the year, did he perceive that much less than he had hoped of the cash taken could be reckoned as clear profit.
He had much to learn in the cunning of retail trade, and it was a kind of study that went sorely against the grain with him.

Happily, at Christmas time came Norbert Franks (whom Will had decided _not_ to take into his confidence) and paid his debt of a hundred and twenty pounds.
This set things right for the moment.

Will was able to pay a three-and-a-half per cent.

dividend to his mother and sister, and to fare ahead hopefully.
He would rather not have gone down to The Haws that Christmastide, but feared that his failure to do so might seem strange.

The needful prevarication cost him so many pangs that he came very near to confessing the truth; he probably would have done so, had not his mother been ailing, and, it seemed to him, little able to bear the shock of such a disclosure.