On the glass panels of the front door the street lamp threw a faint, distorted shadow of a bowler hat, two rather protruding ears, and a pair of long, outspreading whiskers whose ends merged into broad shoulders.  Any one familiar with the streets of Bursley would have instantly divined that Councillor Thomas Batchgrew stood between the gas-lamp and the front door.  And even Rachel, whose acquaintance with Bursley was still slight, at once recognized the outlines of the figure.  She had seen Councillor Batchgrew one day conversing with Mrs. Maldon in Moorthorne Road, and she knew that he bore to Mrs. Maldon the vague but imposing relation of “trustee.”

There are many—­indeed perhaps too many—­remarkable men in the Five Towns.  Thomas Batchgrew was one of them.  He had begun life as a small plumber in Bursley market-place, living behind and above the shop, and begetting a considerable family, which exercised itself in the back yard among empty and full turpentine-cans.  The original premises survived, as a branch establishment, and Batchgrew’s latest-married grandson condescended to reside on the first floor, and to keep a motor-car and a tri-car in the back yard, now roofed over (in a manner not strictly conforming to the building by-laws of the borough).  All Batchgrew’s sons and daughters were married, and several of his grandchildren also.  And all his children, and more than one of the grandchildren, kept motor-cars.  Not a month passed but some Batchgrew, or some Batchgrew’s husband or child, bought a motor-car, or sold one, or exchanged a small one for a larger one, or had an accident, or was gloriously fined in some distant part of the country for illegal driving.  Nearly all of them had spacious detached houses, with gardens and gardeners, and patent slow-combustion grates, and porcelain bathrooms comprising every appliance for luxurious splashing.  And, with the exception of one son who had been assisted to Valparaiso in order that he might there seek death in the tankard without outraging the family, they were all teetotallers—­because the old man, “old Jack,” was a teetotaller.  The family pyramid was based firm on the old man.  The numerous relatives held closely together like an alien oligarchical caste in a conquered country.  If they ever did quarrel, it must have been in private.

The principal seat of business—­electrical apparatus, heating apparatus, and decorating and plumbing on a grandiose scale—­in Hanbridge, had over its immense windows the sign:  “John Batchgrew & Sons.”  The sign might well have read:  “John Batchgrew & Sons, Daughters, Daughters-in-law, Sons-in-law, Grandchildren, and Great-grandchildren.”  The Batchgrew partners were always tendering for, and often winning, some big contract or other for heating and lighting and embellishing a public building or a mansion or a manufactory. (They by no means confined their activities to the Five Towns, having an address in London—­and another in Valparaiso.) And small private customers