Leonora

h and

letariat, had ruined himself to build, was a six-roomed dwelling of honest workmanship in red brick and tile, with a beautiful pillared doorway and fanlight in the antique taste. It had cost two hundred pounds, and was the monument of a life's ambition. Mortgaged by its hard-pressed creator, and then sold by order of the mortgagee, it had ultimately been bought again in triumph by Meshach's father, who made thirty thousand pounds out of pots without getting too big for it, and left it unspoilt to Meshach and Hannah. Only one alteration had ever been made in it, and that,

otyped by age, fixed and confirmed in singularity, Meshach's figure answered better than ever to his name. He was slight of bone and spare in flesh, with a hardly perceptible stoop. He had a red, seamed face. Under the small, pale blue eyes, genial and yet frigid, there showed a thick, raw, red selvedge of skin, and below that the skin was loose and baggy; the wrinkled eyelids, instead of being shaped to the pupil, came down flat and perpendicular. His nose and chin were witch-like, the nostrils large and elastic; the lips, drawn tight together, curved downwards, indifferently captious; a short white beard grew sparsely on the chin; the skin of the narrow neck was fantastically drawn and creased. His limbs were thin, the k

he and Hannah came into their inheritance, he realised everything except the house and invested the proceeds in Consols. With a roof, four hundred a year from the British Empire, a tame capable sister, and notoriously good health, he took final leave of care at the age of thirty-two. He wanted no more than he had. Leisure was his chief luxury; he watched life between meals, and had time to think about what he saw. Being gifted with a vigorous and original mind that by instinct held formulas in defiance, he soon

times in the British Isles, and thereby kept his ideas from congealing. And those who had met him in trains and hotels knew that porters, waiters, and drivers did not mistake his shrewdness for that of a simpleton determined not to be robbed; that he wanted the right things and had the art to get them; in short, that he was an expert in travel. Like m

thing extra for tea, sister,'

her?' dema

happen,' Mesh

e coming?'

id Meshach, gazing med

brother. It's past three now, and Saturday afternoon too!' So saying, she

ther?' she inquired later, wi

ve up mysteries as a miser parts with gold. 'It's Arth

ed the curtain on the last act of a drama which had slumbered for fifteen years, since the death of

ove his daughter into a fatuous marriage, and quarrelled irrevocably with his son. The too sensitive wife died for lack of joy; Alice escaped to Australia with a parson who never accomplished anything but a large family; and Arthur, at the age of seventeen, precociously cursed his father and sought in America a land where there were fewer commandments. Then old Twemlow told his junior partner, Joh

demand, an insufficient gratitude for past benefits, Alice never quite knew what-brought about a second breach in the Twemlow family. The paternal purse was closed, and perhaps not too early, for the improvidence of the tea-blender and Alice's fecundity were a gulf whose depth no munificence could have plumbed. Again John Stanway sympathised with the now enfeebled old man. John advised him to retire, and Twemlow decided to do so, receiving one-third of the net profits of the partnership business during life. In two years he was bedridden and the miserable victim of a housekeeper; but, though both Alice and Arthur attempted reconciliation, some fine point of conscience obliged him to ignore their overtures. John Stanway, his last remaining friend, called often and chatted about business, which he lamented was

th papers and books, and as John ran a small book fell unheeded to the ground. Meshach cried out to John that he had dropped something, but in the excitement and confusion of the fire his rather high-pitched voice was not heard. He left the book lying where it fell; half-an-hour afterwards he saw it again, picked it up, and put it in his pocket. It contained some interesting informal private

which ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have botched; for they had last met as boy of seventeen and man of forty. They lunched richly at the Adelphi, and gave news for news. Arthur's buyer, it seemed, was dead, and after a day or two in London Arthur was coming to the Five Towns to buy a little in person. Meshach inquired about Alice in Australia, and was told that things were in a specially bad way with the tea-blender. He said that you couldn't cure a fool, and remarked casually upon the smallness of the amount left by old Twemlow. Arthur, unaware that Meshach Myatt was raising up an idea which for fifteen years had been buried but never forgotten in his mind, answered with nonchalance that the amount certainly was rather small. Arthur added that in his dying letter of forgiveness to Alice the old man had stated that his income from the works during the la

age frizzling in the kitchen added a warm finish to her confused welcome. She remembered him perfectly, 'Eh! Mr. Arthur,' she said, 'I r

girlish shyness, the primeval innocence, and the pa

he elegance of his suit and his boots, the clean-shaven chin, the fineness of the lines of the nose, and the alert eyes set back under the temples, redeemed him from grossness. He looked under rather than over

Arthur and Hannah entered the parlour, he added: 'She's gotten sausages for you. She would get 'em, th

ut =

old damsel protested sadly,

n the curious parlour-the hysteric industry of his girl-typist, the continuous hot-water service in the bedroom of his glittering apartment at the Concord House, youthful nights at Coster and Bial's music-hall, an insanely extravagant dinner at Sherry's on his thirtieth birthday, a difficulty once with an emissary of Pinkerton, the incredible plague of flies in summer. And during all those racing years of clangour and success in New York, the life of Bursley, self-sufficient and self-contained,

Miss Myatt?' he asked expansively, trying to

nnah, startled. 'Nothing eve

nothing did

r to worry 'em, and dying. Nothing'll cure 'em of it seemingly. Is there a

ng come back to reality after a long, hurried dream. '

-car. And we've got public baths. We wash oursen nowadays. And there's talk of a park,

the first earthenware factor in New York, the Jupiter of a Fourteenth Street office, s

osite your father's old works a

!' he added suddenly, 'do you remember being on that works one day when my poor father was on to me like half a hundred of

ed carelessly, 'I rem

d so cordially to Meshach's advances in Liverpool; for he was by no means facile in social intercourse. And Meshach had rudely forgotten

ah to her brother, timorously br

questione

annah said quickly, 'but we call

ketched for him by the united effort of brother and sister, 'I recollect n

'Best thing he ever did in his life. John's among the better end of folk now. People said it were a come-down for her, but Leonora isn't the sort that comes down. She's

this persistence o

. Yes,' he resumed, 'maybe you don't remember old Knight's sister as had that far house up at Hi

o her,' Twemlow remarked perfunctorily, ri

Meshach as, in the grand manner of a connoisseur, he lighted his cigar.

reat favourite of my brother's. And I'm sure her girls are very good and attentive. Not a day but one or another of them calls to see me, not a d

ewife had not been speaking, 'I will say this for John,' he repeated, s

annah expost

, aloof masculinity of his attitude towards Hannah, gave Twemlow to reflect that in the fundame

bby, and Millicent ran into the

king man in the corner, and her bearing changed as though by a conjuring trick. She flushed sensitively, stroked her blue serge frock, composed her immature features to the

Twemlow, my dear?' said Hannah after

Of course I remember him quite w

d to submit. It was not often that the old lady exercised authority; but on that afternoon th

l subject of the staple trade. The women at the table talked quietly but self-consciously, and Twemlow saw Milly forced to taste parkin after three refusals. Even while still masticating the viscid unripe pa

place?' he said quizzically, smiling at her vivid y

hly, reddening, and then was gone; an

e put his half-consumed cigar into a meerschaum holder, 'goes to the prof

ught primly that in his day su

. Meshach seemed to grow smaller in his padded chair by the hob, to become torpid, and to lose that keen sense of his own ast

he adjusted the height of the flame, he remarked casu

,' he said, 'you told me on Wednesday yo

the poker and struck several times a l

brother?' said Hannah,

d pigeon-hole in the bureau you'll see a little fla

er,' and sh

r as he never got no more than two hundred a

In fact she sent me the old chap's letter to read.

rapped. 'That'll do, sister.' Hannah disappeared. 'Sithee!' He mysteriously drew Arth

Twemlow asked wit

ly displayed and expounded the contents of the book, peering into the yellow

it all this tim

and Twemlow felt that that was precisely what

eath-eight hundred and ninety-two pounds. And year afore that-one thousand two hundred and seven

sister crying for food; he remembered that in the old Bursley days he had always distrusted John Stanway, that conceited fussy imposing young man of twenty-two whom his f

dden gruffness, 'do you suggest that J

ing to no one, and if I had not met you in Liverpool, and you hadn't told me that your sister

nephew, you kno

n, 'I know that. What

dly jocular, almost f

words, 'your nephew robbed my father each year of sums varyi

that book, and what your father told

do it? That's wha

d meet in a day's march. But never sin' he handled money could he keep off stocks and shares. He

you th

I don't,' said

t ought

ter Alice,' he replied, 'it's her as is in

o ruin John Stanway

go and see him, quiet-like, I reckon. Dost think as John'll be stuck fast for six or seven hundred, or eight

her-made some m

mly. 'Suppose he did.

id Twemlow, putting the book in his pocket.

t,'[2] sai

ut =

Oh! Perhaps I can straighten it out neat--' He spoke

aid Meshach

om Meshach's door. 'I'm d--d if I can make you out, Meshach.' He said it aloud. And yet, so complex and self-contradictory is the mind's action under certain circumstances, he could make out Meshach perfectly well; he could