"There is Peter M'Crawney, with all the great Hudson's Bay Company behind him.
That is our most formidable rival, while up on Marble Island there has been started a sort of United States General Stores and Canned Food Depot.

Of course, that is eight hundred miles away, and should not be dangerous, but it makes more difference than anyone might suppose." "Well, it isn't round the corner of the next block at any rate," Jervis replied, laughing to think that trade could suffer from a rival establishment so far away.
"Yes it is, only the block is a big one, you see," she answered, and they all laughed merrily.

When one is young, and the sun is shining, it is so easy to be gay, even though grim care stalks in the background.
"I thought that you and M'Crawney were rather in the position of business partners than trade rivals," Jervis said, as, passing the last bend of the river, he swung the boat along the stretch of straight water to the store.
"In a sense we are partners; that is, we agree to work together, and to supply each other's shortages in stores so far as we can.
But the rivalry is there all the same.

Peter M'Crawney knows he would sell three times the stuff that he does now if it were not for us; while of course our hands would be freer but for him, only we are tied to him, because half of our customers are able to pay us only in skins, and then Peter M'Crawney is our Bank of Exchange." Katherine could not forbear a grimace as she spoke, for peltry can be a very odorous currency, and she had to examine every skin closely before deciding what it was worth in flour, bacon, or tobacco, because the red man is a past master in the art of outwitting the white man, when it comes to a question of trade.
"The plan of bartering skins for stores is not a good one, and the man who buys the skins ought not to be the one who sells the sugar and tea," Jervis remarked in a dictatorial tone; but Katherine only laughed at him, and said that he knew nothing whatever about the red man of the Keewatin wilds, or he would never suggest cash dealings.
"Still it will come, and the red man will be educated to a proper appreciation of his privileges," Jervis maintained, with the quiet obstinacy that Katherine had sometimes noticed in him before.
"I hope I shall be out of the trade before that time comes," she said, as she guided the boat in to the landing place.

"As soon as Miles is able to take control of the store I shall return to my proper avocation of school teaching--that is, always providing there are children to be taught." 'Duke Radford sat in a cushioned chair at a sun-shiny window of the kitchen.