"
Then Joseph turned, and carrying his yellow tin box, he climbed into the
craggy moorland path which takes you to the tramping road. By the pump
of Tavarn Ffos he rested until Shim Carrier came thereby; and while
Shim's horse drank of barley water, Joseph stepped into the wagon; and
at the end of the passage Shim showed him the business of getting a
ticket and that of going into and coming down from a railway carriage.
In that manner did Joseph go to the drapery shop of Rees Jones in
Carmarthen; and at the beginning he was instructed in the keeping and
the selling of such wares as reels of cotton, needles, pins, bootlaces,
mending wool, buttons, and such like--all those things which together
are known as haberdashery. He marked how this and that were done, and in
what sort to fashion his visage and frame his phrases to this or that
woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a
parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the
shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and
bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him: "Shopmen quite
ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones can sell what
nobody wants.
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