Shop-keeper

…in some measure I descend to the fashion of the shop-keepers, who to scrue up the buyer to the higher price, will tell them no better can be had for mony, ’tis the choicest ware in England, and if any can match it, he shall have it for nought.

Oh! how blissful is imagination coloured by hope, and how far more enviable a state than to degenerate into a shop-keeper’s wife, counting out greasy halfpence in the dog-days, or darning her husband’s ragged stockings over the cradle of a squalling brat, singing lullaby with a voice that might have roused a sultan from his cambric pillow, enraptured with the sylvan strain!

The women wear neck-kerchieves spreading over their shoulders, and ruffs, but their aprons show that they are shop-keepers rather than gentry; their high-crowned felt hats are of the mid-Elizabethan fashion.