On the Monday morning he was up early and off to Bursley to collect rents and manage estates.  He had spent nearly five pounds beyond his expectation.  Indeed, if by chance he had not gone to Llandudno with a portion of the previous week’s rents in his pockets, he would have been in what the Five Towns call a fix.

While in Bursley he thought a good deal.  Bursley in August encourages nothing but thought.  His mother was working as usual.  His recitals to her of the existence led by betrothed lovers at Llandudno were vague.

On the Tuesday evening he returned to Llandudno, and, despite the general trend of his thoughts, it once more occurred that his pockets were loaded with a portion of the week’s rents.  He did not know precisely what was going to happen, but he knew that something was going to happen; for the sufficient reason that his career could not continue unless something did happen.  Without either a quarrel, an understanding, or a miracle, three months of affianced bliss with Ruth Earp would exhaust his resources and ruin his reputation as one who was ever equal to a crisis.

III

What immediately happened was a storm at sea.  He heard it mentioned at Rhyl, and he saw, in the deep night, the foam of breakers at Prestatyn.  And when the train reached Llandudno, those two girls in ulsters and caps greeted him with wondrous tales of the storm at sea, and of wrecks, and of lifeboats.  And they were so jolly, and so welcoming, so plainly glad to see their cavalier again, that Denry instantly discovered himself to be in the highest spirits.  He put away the dark and brooding thoughts which had disfigured his journey, and became the gay Denry of his own dreams.  The very wind intoxicated him.  There was no rain.

It was half-past nine, and half Llandudno was afoot on the Parade and discussing the storm—­a storm unparalleled, it seemed, in the month of August.  At any rate, people who had visited Llandudno yearly for twenty-five years declared that never had they witnessed such a storm.  The new lifeboat had gone forth, amid cheers, about six o’clock to a schooner in distress near Rhos, and at eight o’clock a second lifeboat (an old one which the new one had replaced and which had been bought for a floating warehouse by an aged fisherman) had departed to the rescue of a Norwegian barque, the Hjalmar, round the bend of the Little Orme.

“Let’s go on the pier,” said Denry.  “It will be splendid.”

He was not an hour in the town, and yet was already hanging expense!

“They’ve closed the pier,” the girls told him.

But when in the course of their meanderings among the excited crowd under the gas-lamps they arrived at the pier-gates, Denry perceived figures on the pier.

“They’re sailors and things, and the Mayor,” the girls explained.

“Pooh!” said Denry, fired.

He approached the turnstile and handed a card to the official.  It was the card of an advertisement agent of the Staffordshire Signal, who had called at Brougham Street in Denry’s absence about the renewal of Denry’s advertisement.