Princess of the 19th Century Department Store - Chapter 30

Chapter 30

At dawn in January, the sky was just beginning to brighten in shades of gray-blue, with a dense white fog blanketing the heavens.

A fine drizzle drifted through the misty air, though it had no more strength than to dampen the newspapers stuck to the paving stones.

In this bewitching weather, people had no choice but to wear broad-brimmed hats and wrap themselves layer after layer in thick knitted shawls.

The men, too, wound scarves around their necks and turned up their collars against the damp, wearing them in a distinctly local style.

On the busy narrow street of Whitechapel Road, every passerby was dressed in deep black, indigo, or dark brown lightweight wool coats.

They hurried back and forth in leather boots, going in and out of stalls and wholesale shops, heading to the post office or the clinic, or flagging down public carriages.

Fred and Daisy were dressed the same way, blending seamlessly into the crowd.

They were on their way to a bicycle shop near Petticoat Lane.

Hawken Bicycles was a factory store with a thirty-year history that occasionally placed advertisements in the weekly papers.

At present, the shop was unremarkable and not very large, with a stable but limited clientele.

It had only a small bicycle workshop in eastern Whitechapel.

And in a forgotten corner near Whitechapel’s commercial street, in the inconspicuous little alley before them called Norhans Lane, it had a direct-run storefront.

Daisy and Fred entered Norhans Lane. She looked around and felt that the alley here was almost even narrower than Clark Street.

Both sides were lined with shops selling tools, parts, and hardware, along with handcart sellers and blacksmiths.

The ground was covered with coal cinders, iron filings, and wood shavings, while all sorts of odds and ends and raw materials were piled along the roadside.

The people coming and going here were all burly men in plain clothes, picking through tools with practiced eyes. Not a single young girl was in sight.

The passersby who brushed past them glanced curiously at Daisy for a moment, but when they saw Fred, the red-haired giant beside her, glaring fiercely back, they all quickly looked away.

Since arriving in this world, this was Daisy’s first time setting foot in a place like this. Unlike the lively markets crowded with women, the environment here was relatively closed off.

She had expected as much, which was why she had dragged her old man along as security.

When they reached the cycle shop at the end of the alley, calling it a shop was generous. It was really a warehouse, a wooden building with a small yard behind it.

The place had just opened. An apprentice in a waistcoat and shirt was oiling a chain by the entrance.

This cycle shop also handled repairs.

Seeing customers arrive at the door, the apprentice hurriedly stood and walked over to them.

“Sir, are you looking to buy, get something repaired, or purchase a secondhand cycle?”

The apprentice addressed Fred, the middle-aged man who looked more likely to be in charge.

Hearing this, Fred instinctively turned back to see what Daisy wanted. She, however, did not speak up. She only gave him a look, indicating that he should handle the negotiation.

So Fred turned back around and followed the apprentice into the shop.

“We’re looking to buy a new one.”

Daisy quietly followed them into the warehouse. Her old man was up front drawing the apprentice’s sales pitch, while she used a sharp eye to inspect every vehicle.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the internal combustion engine had yet to become the jewel of industrial development. At present, all railways were still driven by steam engines.

As for the small means of transportation seen everywhere on the streets of London, aside from carriages-luxury items in their own right-the mainstream options were bicycles and tricycles.

Fine things like fuel-powered automobiles were still buried in the dust of industry and would take a few more years to emerge.

Although Daisy was a transmigrator, every trade had its specialty. In her previous life, she had never had the sudden inspiration to go build a car.

Nor did she have any background in science or engineering. As a result, she could not partake in this particular era dividend, much less build anything from scratch by hand.

For now, she could only honestly choose a pedal tricycle, a product whose manufacturing techniques were already relatively mature.

The interior of the shop was quite spacious. Several horse-drawn rear carriages were parked inside, along with four or five pedal tricycles, while a few bicycles hung from the walls.

Some were new, and some were used.

There were hardly any customers in the shop this early in the morning. The apprentice first tried to sell Fred a small green-painted tricycle cargo cart. It had no canopy, and its frame looked rather flimsy.

Fred asked the price, and the apprentice quoted a figure far above expectations: ten pounds.

Hearing this from behind, Daisy turned slightly and revealed a sincere smile.

So apprentices here knew that sales trick, too. First show the customer something crude and expensive, then lead them to something normal.

Sure enough, Fred also felt it was not worth the price and began asking about a slightly better-looking pedal tricycle beside it.

That one was painted black. It had a canopy in the front, and the cargo bed in the rear had a lockable sheet-metal compartment with plenty of space.

The apprentice smiled broadly and pointed at the vehicle.

“Sir, this one is only seven pounds more than that one. You really may want to consider it.”

Fred thought it over and was about to ask Daisy’s opinion. After all, she had the better head for these things.

When he turned around, he saw Daisy bending down to examine the axle frame and chain of the black tricycle.

She reached out to test the thickness of the metal and check whether it met the standard.

Speaking of which, in her previous life, Daisy had held three driver’s licenses. Cars, motorcycles, even trailers-she could drive them all.

To hook an investor, she had once spent an entire afternoon falling over despite her poor balance, and in the end she had learned to ride a bicycle.

Later, as expected, she had accompanied that investor on road rides everywhere and pedaled mountain bikes with him.

To have topics to talk about, she had also crammed quite a bit of knowledge about pedal-powered vehicles.

But mainly, it had been that investor showing off his knowledge to her the entire way, teaching her in reverse.

Still, who cared where the knowledge had come from? In any case, wasn’t it proving useful now?
Daisy examined it carefully. The vehicle’s structure and proportions were fairly stable, and the parts were intact. It met her requirements.

As for the budget…

With the little fund Lisa had provided, the sales revenue from this period, the wages settled from milk delivery, and the transfer fee for the milk-delivery equipment, they had a total cash flow of just over sixty pounds.

But they couldn’t spend all of it here. The smaller the investment, the better.

The apprentice standing off to the side with his hands tucked away saw that Fred still hadn’t said anything. He only kept looking, giving no sign of whether he was satisfied or not.

So the apprentice said dryly, “This model is our shop’s best seller. The quality is excellent too. It works for freight or passengers…”

Beside him, Daisy straightened up, took out a handkerchief to wipe off the dust, turned, made a circle around the vehicle, then walked back over.

She cut off his stiff, rambling sales pitch, her tone calm but edged with faint teasing.

“If, within five minutes, you can clearly explain where this vehicle’s value lies, how it differs from the other models, real examples of its use cases, maintenance methods, or any service that can convince me-”

“Then I’ll buy it at full price, out of respect for you. Not a single penny less.”

At that, the apprentice opened his mouth and stared blankly, as though he had suddenly jammed.

Daisy said mercifully, “Otherwise, give me an honest price. Say, thirty percent off.”

…

Half an hour later, Fred returned from the test ride. They spent twelve pounds.

The apprentice hadn’t earned a penny of commission. Like an eggplant struck by frost, he collected the money with a pout and a drooping head, then wrote out an invoice.

Fred rode in front, while Daisy sat on the built-in stool in the carriage.

The rear door of the carriage was closed tight, and there was a glass window on the side facing the front, letting in a shaft of light.

Daisy watched the rain outside as the street drifted slowly past her eyes.

They first went to Whitechapel Road and visited four or five wholesale grocery shops, ordering roughly ten pounds’ worth of various sundries.

Finally, they arrived at a conspicuous tea shop beside Whitechapel Road.

Laird Black Tea Shop. It was not far from the Whitechapel Commercial Street Police Station; only a few steps away.

This was already Daisy’s third visit to the shop. She was a regular now, so Fred only needed to wait outside.

Business inside was booming. Clerks stood behind counters packed with tin canisters, weighing tea for customers, wrapping it, taking payment, so busy they could barely keep up.

The manager’s surname was Tarr. He was not the owner, but he held shares in the shop and had always managed the front-of-house business.

Daisy had come twice before and had bought several canisters wholesale. Tarr remembered her. When he saw her come in through the door, he beckoned to her.

“You little girl, you really know how to pick your timing. A batch of Assam black tea just arrived this morning.”

Daisy walked in alone with a smile that did not reach her eyes and exchanged a few pleasantries with Tarr.

The wholesale prices for tea at this fellow’s shop were a little higher than elsewhere.

He was tight-lipped, and the prices were hard to bargain down.

But only here could she find tea that, at this price, was not too expensive, with leaves and flavor that passed the basic standard and stable quality.

At other wholesale shops, either the prices were no good, or the quality fluctuated wildly.

Daisy had always wanted to find the source tea merchant.

But before, her family’s scale had been too small. Even if she found one, a tea merchant doing cross-border business like that would never bother with her.

Now, however, the shop was about to expand, and its sales volume would be enough for her to bypass the wholesaler and cooperate directly with the source tea merchant.

So her main purpose in coming here today was to pry a bit of information out of Tarr’s iron mouth.

She bypassed the other customers and went with Tarr directly to the shelves behind the counter to look at the goods.

He had a great many varieties of tea here.

There were gunpowder tea, Pu’er brick tea, and Chun Mee from the Qing Court.

There were Assam, Darjeeling, and Orange Pekoe from India and Ceylon.

Samples from different international tea merchants were all displayed on the shelves behind the main counter.

The tin canisters were arranged very neatly, each labeled with its place of origin and retail price.

There were teas ranging from several shillings a pound to four or five pence a pound.

The more expensive ones were naturally the green teas and black teas from the Qing Court.

In the setting of the original novel, this world was highly fictionalized overall.

Its main conflicts were reflected in the thorny two-party conflicts, ethnic issues, and class issues of the British Isles.

This Qing Court was completely different from the Qing Court she had known in her previous life.

The only thing similar to her previous life was that, in this era, goods shipped from there to Europe were more expensive than her little life was worth.

The favorites of upper-class lords and ladies were Lapsang Souchong and Tanyang Congou.

In an affordable tea shop like this, such luxuries were not even sold.

So refined fare like Qing Court tea had never been within Daisy’s consideration from the beginning. She only sold black tea from India or Ceylon.

It had an advantage in tariffs, was extremely cheap, had a strong tea flavor, and was the most popular kind in the lower-end market.

Tarr searched for a while, took the newly arrived Assam tea down from the shelf, placed it on the counter, and opened the tin lid for her to smell.

At the side, he said, “This batch is fairly good. It’s just that the situation has been tense lately, and it was held up at customs for several days.

“The tea merchant’s freight costs for hiring ships have risen a little, so this tea is two pence more expensive than usual.”

Daisy kept her head lowered, smelling it. She pinched a small handful of tea leaves between her fingers. Only after a long while did she slowly raise her head, putting on a grave expression.

“Boss, is there something wrong with this tea? The smell doesn’t seem quite right.”