In the original body’s memories, this Mr. Lobit was notoriously stingy in business, with practices like tampering with scales being all too common.
Occasionally, customers who had fallen ill from spoiled food would go to his shop seeking an explanation, but Mr. Lobit would stubbornly insist the goods weren’t from his store.
As a result, most of his clientele were transient, one-time buyers.
His stable customer base wasn’t much larger than hers.
Dolly thought that her own small advantage lay in having many regular customers. She needed to ensure quality while using her attention to detail to enhance customer loyalty.
Although Lobit had never personally offended her, the local environment meant limited customer sources.
For shops to survive, it was essentially a zero-sum game—if you weren’t advancing, you were falling behind.
She took out the yellowed old stationery from the cabinet, fetched red and black ink, picked up a quill, and began writing something, half-heartedly.
In the afternoon, foot traffic was sparse, with only a handful of people.
With fewer customers, she had to rely on her efforts to increase the average transaction value.
Dolly perked up and attended to each customer one by one, ensuring no one left empty-handed, until she heard the clock chime—six in the evening.
By this time, Mary had made several trips to return the babies she had been caring for to their homes.
Today, she didn’t have to reluctantly mind the shop, so she spent the afternoon washing the family’s accumulated dirty laundry and cleaning the rooms and stairs.
She also baked a batch of bread for dinner.
Dolly counted all the loose change earned in the afternoon, tucked it away, and locked the cabinet.
Not only did she smell the aroma of bread wafting from the kitchen, but it seemed the neighboring households were also preparing their meals.
The scents of sausages, bacon, and butter filled the air—the poor residents here only had their most substantial meal at dinner, a habit that had persisted for two hundred years.
Outside, the alley grew dark, the sky a deep blue. Several women with painted lips and curled hair trudged through the snow, heading straight into the tavern across the street during dinner hours.
Dolly knew these women were pitiable, only able to solicit clients in such places. They earned little money and had to bathe with chemical agents, which was terribly harmful to their health.
Yet they never saved money, living in nearby apartments and paying rent week by week.
Whatever money they earned was spent on gin, snacks, cosmetics, clothing, and cigarettes.
Most of the snacks in her own cabinet were sold to them.
Dolly glanced at the small tailor shop diagonally across the street—its owner also catered to these women.
The tailor, surnamed Heilote, was a tall, bald man with exceptional craftsmanship.
His wife, Mrs. Heilote, was half a businesswoman, usually lending money to these women on credit and collecting interest.
Mrs. Heilote had a son and a daughter, both of whom were Penny’s classmates.
Dolly caught sight of the two Heilote children returning home with their satchels.
Sure enough, Penny returned not long after.
When Penny went out, she wore a green long skirt, a woolen coat, a wrap of apricot-yellow shawl, a brimmed bonnet-style lace-starched small hat on her head, and a pair of long boots.
In this era, women—whether ladies in palaces or washerwomen in slums, adults or children—always wore long skirts, petticoats, and brimmed small hats when going out.
Penny entered the house, removed her outerwear, and leaned over the counter to look at the biscuit paper packages Dolly had prepared.
Half a pound per package, wrapped in two layers of paper, with a small price tag hanging from the hemp rope. The tag was marked with the date, weight, flavor, and price. The outermost layer of paper was even adorned with the elegant cursive script: “Nash Grocery Store.”
But Penny was more focused on the rich, fragrant biscuits. She gathered around, hoping to snatch some crumbs to satisfy her craving.
Seeing this, Dolly grabbed a handful of biscuits and was about to hand them to her.
Penny was overjoyed yet suspicious, but she still extended both hands to receive them. Suddenly, Dolly paused.
“If you want the biscuits, you have to promise to do something for me.” Penny widened her eyes, knowing that nothing good comes for free.
However, after a moment of thought, she quickly nodded.
Only then did Dolly hand over the biscuits in her hand, then turned to retrieve a stack of yellowed letter paper.
On the letter paper, the first line was written in bold, elegant cursive: “Nash Grocery Store.”
Below were two columns of product names, with prices marked in red ink.
Penny took the papers and mumbled as she read:
“Soap, one penny per piece, two pennies for three pieces, three pennies for four pieces…”
Following that were sugar, salt, flour, biscuits, butter… as well as the prices and promotional offers for daily necessities like ink, letter paper, and sealing wax.
Holding these slips of paper, Penny felt utterly confused. They looked somewhat like flyers.
“Tomorrow morning, slip these papers into the neighbors’ window cracks, door gaps, and mailboxes. Do it properly—I’ll check.”
“If you do it well tomorrow, there will be more biscuits.”
Penny had the day off tomorrow. She nodded solemnly and took away both the biscuits and the stack of papers.
A while later, Mr. Nash and Fred returned.
Fred Nash was a burly man in his thirties, with red hair, a full beard, a simple mind, and a good temper.
The father and son easily pushed a cart with baskets, slowly making their way through the alley.
The baskets contained several iron jugs, each holding dozens of liters, totaling hundreds of liters of milk. They had to deliver them door-to-door to customers who had placed orders.
Returning by dinnertime was considered early.
The two pushed the cart to the door, carried the milk jugs inside, placed them against the wall, unloaded the cart, and stored it in the already cramped space by the front door.
Even at home, they couldn’t rest. The father and son went into the kitchen, took out the household wooden buckets, and headed to the public pump to fetch water for daily use.
As Fred carried the buckets out of the kitchen, he glanced at the shelves and noticed they seemed rearranged, completely different from how they had been when they left in the morning.
Every corner had been scrubbed clean, and the items were arranged as neatly as if printed.
At that moment, Dolly was still at the counter, meticulously tallying the day’s small accounts. She was so focused that Fred didn’t dare disturb her.
Lisa had kept a small ledger in the cabinet. She used to balance the accounts every day—a good habit.
Dolly picked up a quill, dipped it in ink, and continued recording in the blank spaces that followed.
Today, only fifteen customers had visited the store, a pitiful quarter of the usual number.
Yet, the sales had reached as high as three hundred pence, with an average transaction value of twenty pence.
Looking at the sales alone, this was the level the store had only achieved during its busiest and most prosperous times in the past.
This improvement was entirely due to her exceptionally attentive counter service and salesmanship today.
Dolly had calculated professionally that the store’s sales profit margin was twenty-five percent.
Sales of three hundred pence, with a profit of about seventy-five pence.
If every day were like today, then the monthly profit would be two thousand two hundred pence, which is a net gain of nine pounds.
This is even more profitable than during the best business periods in the past.
However, if she can continue to increase sales and expand wholesale purchases, the cost of goods can be further reduced, and the profit margin could reach thirty percent.
Though a small shop may seem insignificant, if managed well, it can accumulate the first pot of gold.
Author’s Note: