of daffodils beside the tiny greenhouse. Beyond the sooty wall a
birch flaunted its new tassels, and the jackdaws were circling about
the steeple of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk. A blackbird whistled from
a thorn-bush, and Mr. McCunn was inspired to follow its example.
He began a tolerable version of "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch."

He felt singularly light-hearted, and the immediate cause was his
safety razor. A week ago he had bought the thing in a sudden fit
of enterprise, and now he shaved in five minutes, where before he
had taken twenty, and no longer confronted his fellows, at least one
day in three, with a countenance ludicrously mottled by sticking-plaster.
Calculation revealed to him the fact that in his fifty-five years,
having begun to shave at eighteen, he had wasted three thousand three
hundred and seventy hours--or one hundred and forty days--or between four
and five months--by his neglect of this admirable invention. Now he
felt that he had stolen a march on Time. He had fallen heir, thus late,
to a fortune in unpurchasable leisure.

He began to dress himself in the sombre clothes in which he had been
accustomed for thirty-five years and more to go down to the shop in
Mearns Street. And then a thought came to him which made him
discard the grey-striped trousers, sit down on the edge of his bed,
and muse.

Since Saturday the shop was a thing of the past. On Saturday at
half-past eleven, to the accompaniment of a glass of dubious sherry,
he had completed the arrangements by which the provision shop in
Mearns Street, which had borne so long the legend of D. McCunn,
together with the branches in Crossmyloof and the Shaws, became the
property of a company, yclept the United Supply Stores, Limited.