Mrs Molesworth

The Laurel Walk Mrs Molesworth

Publisher Marketing: There was a chemist's shop at Craig Bay, quite a smart chemist's shop, with plate-glass windows and the orthodox "purple" and other coloured jars of Rosamund fame. It was one of the inconsistencies of the place, of which there were several. For Craig Bay was far from being a town; it was not even a big village, and the two or three shops of its early days were of the simplest and quaintest description, emporiums of a little of everything, into which you made your way by descending two or three steps below the level of the rough pavement outside. The chemist's shop was the first established, I think, of the new order of things, when the place and neighbourhood suddenly rose into repute as peculiarly bracing and healthy from the mingling of sea and hill air with which they were favoured. It was kept in countenance now by several others, a draper's, a stationer's, a photographer's, of course, besides the imperative butcher's, fishmonger's, and so on, some of which subsided into closed shutters and vacancy after the "season" was over and the visitors had departed. For endeavours which had been made to introduce a winter season had not been crowned with success. The place was too out-of-the-way, the boasted mildness of climate not altogether to be depended upon. But the chemist's shop stood faithfully open all the year round, doing a little business in wares not, strictly speaking, belonging to it, such as note-paper and even books, when the library-and-stationer's in one had gone to sleep for the time.