were ever complaining of the inaccuracy of their accounts for small jobs.  People who, in the age of Queen Victoria’s earlier widowhood, had sent for Batchgrew to repair a burst spout, still by force of habit sent for Batchgrew to repair a burst spout, and still had to “call at Batchgrew’s” about mistakes in the bills, which mistakes, after much argument and asseveration, were occasionally put right.  In spite of their prodigious expenditures, and of a certain failure on the part of the public to understand “where all the money came from,” the financial soundness of the Batchgrews was never questioned.  In discussing the Batchgrews no bank-manager and no lawyer had ever by an intonation or a movement of the eyelid hinted that earthquakes had occurred before in the history of the world and might occur again.

And yet old Batchgrew—­admittedly the cleverest of the lot, save possibly the Valparaiso soaker—­could not be said to attend assiduously to business.  He scarcely averaged two hours a day on the premises at Hanbridge.  Indeed the staff there had a sense of the unusual, inciting to unusual energy and devotion, when word went round:  “Guv’nor’s in the office with Mr. John.”  The Councillor was always extremely busy with something other than his main enterprise.  It was now reported, for example, that he was clearing vast sums out of picture-palaces in Wigan and Warrington.  Also he was a religionist, being Chairman of the local Church of England Village Mission Fund.  And he was a politician, powerful in municipal affairs.  And he was a reformer, who believed that by abolishing beer he could abolish the poverty of the poor—­and acted accordingly.  And lastly he liked to enjoy himself.

Everybody knew by sight his flying white whiskers and protruding ears.  And he himself was well aware of the steady advertising value of those whiskers—­of always being recognizable half a mile off.  He met everybody unflinchingly, for he felt that he was invulnerable at all points and sure of a magnificent obituary.  He was invariably treated with marked deference and respect.  But he was not an honest man.  He knew it.  All his family knew it.  In business everybody knew it except a few nincompoops.  Scarcely any one trusted him.  The peculiar fashion in which, when he was not present, people “old Jacked” him—­this alone was enough to condemn a man of his years.  Lastly, everybody knew that most of the Batchgrew family was of a piece with its head.

VI

Now Rachel had formed a prejudice against old Batchgrew.  She had formed it, immutably, in a single second of time.  One glance at him in the street—­and she had tried and condemned him, according to the summary justice of youth.  She was in that stage of plenary and unhesitating wisdom when one not only can, but one must, divide the whole human race sharply into two categories, the sheep and the goats; and she had sentenced old Batchgrew to a place on the extreme