The mulish vehicular display does not end the tale of Denry’s splendour.  He had an office in St Luke’s Square, and in the office was an office-boy, small but genuine, and a real copying-press, and outside it was the little square signboard which in the days of his simplicity used to be screwed on to his mother’s door.  His mother’s steely firmness of character had driven him into the extravagance of an office.  Even after he had made over a thousand pounds out of the Llandudno lifeboat in less than three months, she would not listen to a proposal for going into a slightly larger house, of which one room might serve as an office.  Nor would she abandon her own labours as a sempstress.  She said that since her marriage she had always lived in that cottage and had always worked, and that she meant to die there, working:  and that Denry could do what he chose.  He was a bold youth, but not bold enough to dream of quitting his mother; besides, his share of household expenses in the cottage was only ten shillings a week.  So he rented the office; and he hired an office-boy, partly to convey to his mother that he should do what he chose, and partly for his own private amusement.

He was thus, at an age when fellows without imagination are fraying their cuffs for the enrichment of their elders and glad if they can afford a cigar once a month, in possession of a business, business premises, a clerical staff, and a private carriage drawn by an animal unique in the Five Towns.  He was living on less than his income; and in the course of about two years, to a small extent by economies and to a large extent by injudicious but happy investments, he had doubled the Llandudno thousand and won the deference of the manager of the bank at the top of St Luke’s Square—­one of the most unsentimental men that ever wrote “refer to drawer” on a cheque.

And yet Denry was not satisfied.  He had a secret woe, due to the facts that he was gradually ceasing to be a card, and that he was not multiplying his capital by two every six months.  He did not understand the money market, nor the stock market, nor even the financial article in the Signal; but he regarded himself as a financial genius, and deemed that as a financial genius he was vegetating.  And as for setting the town on fire, or painting it scarlet, he seemed to have lost the trick of that.

II

And then one day the populace saw on his office door, beneath his name-board, another sign: 

FIVE TOWNS UNIVERSAL THRIFT CLUB. Secretary and Manager—­E.H.  MACHIN.

An idea had visited him.