Anna of the Five Towns

dren threw themselves out of the great doors at either end of the Sunday-school-boys from the right, girls from the left-in two howling,

n the doorway; then they would wander, and she started to count the windows of the various Connexional buildings which on three sides enclosed the yard-chapel, school, lecture-hall, and chapel-keeper's house. Most of the children had already squeezed through the narrow iron gate into the street beyond, where a steam-car was rumbling and clattering up Duck Bank, attended by its immense shadow. The teachers remained a little behind. Gradually dropping the pedagogic pose, and happy in the virtuous sensation of duty accomplished, they forgot the frets and fatigues of the day, and grew amiably vivacious among themselves. Wi

young

e lecture-hall. The one who had called out was Henry Mynors, morning superintendent of the Sunday-school and conductor of the men's Bible-class held in the lecture-hall

' Mynors smiled playfully down upon Agnes Tellwright as he idly turned the leave

less calm of infancy. 'Yes, I do,' she answered in her high, thin voi

ave it,' he admitted, with

s. His eyes, so kind and sincere, and that mysterious, delicious, inexpressib

s. Despite a continual effort after ease of manner, he was often sheepish and self-conscious, even, as now, when he could discover no reason for such a condition of mind. But Agnes

n't out of school y

ve been waiting ever so l

ged with much briskness from the girls' door. This was Mrs. Sutton, a distant rel

she said, shaking hands with Mynors, and including both him and Willie Price in an embrac

noon, Henry?' Mrs. Sutton's

said, 'very

oing a gr

seventy prese

say-Where two or three are gathered together...? But I must be getting on. The horse

: Willie Price fell a little to the rear, his big hands half-way into his pockets and his eyes diffidently roving. It appeared as

due to the fact that she so obviously regarded her carriage, not as a carriage, but as a contrivance on four wheels for enabling an infirm creature to move rapidly from place to place. When she got into it she had exactly the air of a doctor on his rounds. Mrs. Sutton's bodily frame had long ago proved inadequate to the ceaseless demands of a spirit indefatigably altruistic, and her continuance in activity was a notable illustration of the dominion of mind over matter. Her husband, a potter's valuer and commission agent, made money with facility in that lucrative vocation, and his wife's charities were famous, notwithstanding her attempts to hide them. N

ors was at her side onc

earied. 'Yes. Here she is. A

k checked with brown and edged with brown velvet, thin cotton gloves of cream colour, and a broad straw hat like her sister's. Her grave face, owing to the prominence of the cheekbones and the width of the jaw, had a slight angularity; the lips were thin, the brown eyes rather large, the eyebrows level, the nose fine and delicate; the ears could scarcely be s

she is,' he thought, as she gave him her cool hand and murmured a reply to his salutation. But even his aquiline gaze could not surprise the secr

ions of a man well accustomed to prominence in the society of women. Little Agnes s

er girl, so of course I had to mention it to the superintendent. Mr. Price gave her a long lecture, and now she is

miss

sible emphasis he had expressed a complete disagreement with his

mly. 'I rather like the girl,' she ventured in

entions

ice said-if it had been an

sing without a phrase. Under that calm mask a strange and sweet satisfaction thrilled through her as her precious instinct of common sense-rarest of good qualities, and pining always for fellowship-found a companion in his own. She had dreaded the overtures which for a fortnight past she had fores

ing round her sister's skirts, when Willie Pric

ng?' Mynors inquir

ought of him exactly as Agnes had done. He hesitated for a frac

od together outside the gate. 'I ask her if she thinks she really de

ffectionate smile of comprehen

ories for children,"' Agnes read out in a monotone: then

back by a quarter-past four.' And turning to Mynors: '

take my arm and show me the way.' Shyly Agnes left her

d respectable who had not only clothes but a separate deportment for the seventh day; house-wives whose pale faces, as of prisoners free only for a while, showed a na?ve and timorous pleasure in the unusual diversion; young women made glorious by richly-coloured stuffs and carrying themselves with the defiant independence of good wages earned in warehouse or painting-shop; youths oppressed by stiff new clothes bought at Whitsuntide, in which the bright necktie and the nosegay revealed a thousand secret aspiratio

nes exclaimed. 'It's like

ches, Agnes?' Mynors asked

heart? Surely it was impossible that she should ever know these secrets! He-and she: they were utterly foreign to each other. So the primary dissonances of sex vibrated within her, and her own feelings puzzled her. Still, there was an instant pleasure, delightful, if disturbing and inexplicable. And also there was a sensation of triumph, which, though she tried to scorn it, she could not banish. That a man and a woman should saunter together on that road was nothing; but the circumstance acquired tremendous importance when the man happened to be Henry Mynors and the woman Anna Tellwright. Mynors-handsome, dark, accomplished, exemplary and prosperous-had walked for ten years circumspect and unscathed amid the glances of a whole legion of maids. As for Anna, the peculiarity of her position had always marked her for special attention: ever since her father settled in Bursley, she had felt herself to be the object of an interes

gnes growing courageous, began to retort. She was now walking between them, and the other two smiled to each other at

Hymn.' The crude, brazen sounds were tempered in their passage through the warm, still air, and fell gently on the ear in soft waves

long in tight processions, inspecting one after another the various features of which they had read full descriptions in the 'Staffordshire Signal'-waterfall, grotto, lake, swans, boat, seats, fa?ence, statues-and scanning with interest the names of the donors so clearly inscribed on such objects of art and craft as from divers motives had been presented to the town by its citizens. Mynors, as he manoeuvred a way for the two girls through the main avenue up to the

nd chimneys has soiled and shrivelled the surrounding country till there is no village lane within a league but what offers a gaunt and ludicrous travesty of rural charms. Nothing could be more prosaic than the huddled, red-brown streets; nothing more seemingly remote from romance. Yet be it said that romance is even here-the romance which, for those who have an eye to perceive it, ever dwells amid the seats of industrial manufacture, softening the coarseness, transfiguring the squalor, of these mighty alchemic operations. Look down into the valley from this terrace-height where love is kindling, embrace the whole smoke-girt amphitheatre in a glance, and it may be that you will suddenly comprehend the secret and superb significance of the vast Doing which goes forward below. Because they seldom think, the townsmen take shame when indicted for having disfigured half a county in order to live. Th

t, that of all the strenuous weekday vitality of the district only a murmurous hush remained. But everywhere on the

his hand, when they had been silent a

there is a strike. It costs hundreds and

ther says it's the smoke that st

re of health. I saw him out this morning at a quart

lied, 'he is al

aren't, I

, I

o,' Agnes

ith Hanbridge?' Mynors continue

said. 'At first-last yea

her used to preach in

rs ago,' she

say you know that we are rather short

each now:' Anna flushed as she spo

. 'I am coming to see him soo

Bursley a year, but no visitor had crossed their doorsteps except the minister, once, and s

d prayed that he might not be inten

answered lightly.

to know that his visit would have at least some assigned pretext; but already her heart

e eyes were everywhere,

figure. She had the air of being a leader. Grafted on to the original simple honesty of her eyes there was the unconsciously-acquired arrogance of one who had always been accustomed to deference. Socially, Beatrice had no peer among the young women who were active in the Wesleyan

Beatrice said as she came up. 'So

each there was an obscure constraint, and something in Myno

im familiarly, without taking his han

here, mademoiselle

ht of you, and sent me up to say that you were to be su

ks. I had

eling might seem to her intelligence. And this attitude extended not only to the intimacy, but to Beatrice's handsome clothes and facile urbanity, which by contrast emphasised her own poor little frock and tongue-tied manner. The mere existence of

to discus

ce, pointing with her ribboned sunshade to some building plots which lay to the north

a. It was torture to her to re

streets in a few months. Will he

od her father, a short, stout, ruddy, middle-aged man in a shabby brown suit. He recognised her, stared fixedly, and nodded with his grotesque and ambiguous grin.

om the other the true answer to a question which lay unuttered in her heart. Then, having bidden adieu to Mynor