The Old Wives' Tale

This chapter recounts the changes that Samuel and Constance make at the shop during their first few years of running the business, while also giving insight into the evolving dynamics of their young marriage. Constance is now conscious of having grown up yet still holds onto some of the ideals and habits of her youth:

She sat there full of new knowledge and new importance, brimming with experience and strange, unexpected aspirations […]. And yet […] the old Constance still lingered in that frame […]; you could see the timid thing peeping wistfully out of the eyes of the married woman (170).

A major change occurs when Samuel commissions a sign for the shop, breaking a long tradition that the shop should have no sign. His action troubles Constance, but she says nothing, generally appreciative of her husband’s abilities.

Changes continue to accrue at the draper’s shop, many of them accompanied by the sense of surprise and adjustment to one’s mate that characterizes the early years of marriage. Constance knew that her husband had long fancied having a dog but is still surprised when he buys one. She’s also startled to find that he smokes cigars, but to her mind, the sign constitutes the greatest change: