The Dales were beginning to prosper now, but their first winter had been an anxious, difficult time.
Dale had made a common mistake in his calculations, and experience soon taught him that what is known as good-will, the most delicate and sensitive of all trade-values, can not by a mere stroke of the pen be transferred from one person to another. Solid customers turned truant; the business went down with terrifying velocity; and old Bates, who loyally came day after day to advise and assist, spoke with sincere regret. "William, I never foretold this. I must see what can be done. I'll leave no stone unturned." And he trotted about, touting for his successor, tramping long miles to beg for a continuance of favors that had unexpectedly ceased, but usually returning sadly to confess that his efforts had again been fruitless. They were gloomy evening hours, when the old and the young man sat together in the office by the roadway; and at night Mavis used to hear her sleeping husband moan and groan so piteously that she sometimes felt compelled to wake him.
"What is it?" Awakened thus, he would spring up with a hoarse cry, and be almost out of the bed before she was able to restrain him.
"It's nothing, dear. Only you were in one of your bad dreams, and I simply couldn't let you go on being tormented."
"That's right," he used to mutter sleepily. "I don't want to dream. I've enough that's real."
"Don't you worry, dear old boy. You're going to pull through grand--in the end. I know you are. Besides, if not--then we'll try something else."
She always murmured such consolatory phrases until he fell asleep once more.
The fact was that Bates had been respected by the well-to-do and loved by the humble; and Dale, out here, remained an unknown quantity. Anything of his fame as postmaster that had traveled along these two miles from Rodchurch did not help him. He was not liked. He felt it in the air, a dull inactive hostility, when talking to gentlefolks' coachmen or giving orders to his own servants. The coachmen could take no pleasure in patronizing him, nor the men in working for him. Mr. Bates advised him once or twice to cultivate a gentler and more ingratiating method of dealing with the people in his employ.
"Perhaps, William, I'm to blame for having spoilt 'em a bit;--but it'd be good policy for you to take them as you find them, and get them bound to you before you begin drilling 'em. A soft word now and then, William--you don't know how far it goes sometimes."