’Up by the railway station, opposite your father’s old works as was—­it’s a row of villas now.’

‘Well,’ said Twemlow.  ’That sounds pretty nice.  I believe I’ll get you to come around with me and show off the sights.  Say!’ he added suddenly, ’do you remember being on that works one day when my poor father was on to me like half a hundred of bricks, and you said, “The boy’s all right, Mr. Twemlow”?  I’ve never forgotten that.  I’ve thought of it scores of times.’

‘Nay!’ Meshach answered carelessly, ‘I remember nothing o’ that.’

Twemlow was dashed by this oblivion.  It was his memory of the minute incident which more than anything else had encouraged him to respond so cordially to Meshach’s advances in Liverpool; for he was by no means facile in social intercourse.  And Meshach had rudely forgotten the affecting scene!  He felt diminished, and saw in the old bachelor a personification of the blunt independent spirit of the Five Towns.

* * * * *

‘Milly’s late to-day,’ said Hannah to her brother, timorously breaking the silence which ensued.

‘Milly?’ questioned Twemlow.

‘Millicent her proper name is,’ Hannah said quickly, ’but we call her Milly.  My nephew’s youngest.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Twemlow commented, when the Myatt family-tree had been sketched for him by the united effort of brother and sister, ’I recollect now you told me in Liverpool that Mr. Stanway was married.  Who did he marry?’

Meshach Myatt pushed back his chair and stood up.  ’John catched on to Knight’s daughter, the doctor at Turnhill,’ he said, reaching to a cigar-cabinet on the sideboard.  ’Best thing he ever did in his life.  John’s among the better end of folk now.  People said it were a come-down for her, but Leonora isn’t the sort that comes down.  She’s got blood in her. That!’ He snapped his fingers.  ’She’s a good bred ’un.  Old Knight’s father came from up York way.  Ah!  She’s a cut above Twemlow & Stanway, is Leonora.’

Twemlow smiled at this persistence of respect for caste.

‘Have a weed,’ said Meshach, offering him a cigar.  ’You’ll find it all right; it’s a J.S.  Murias.  Yes,’ he resumed, ’maybe you don’t remember old Knight’s sister as had that far house up at Hillport?  When she died she left it to Leonora, and they’ve lived there this dozen year and more.’

‘Well, I guess she’s got a handsome name to her,’ Twemlow remarked perfunctorily, rising and leaving Hannah alone at the table.

‘And she’s the handsomest woman in the Five Towns:  that I do know,’ said Meshach as, in the grand manner of a connoisseur, he lighted his cigar.  ‘And her was forty, day afore yesterday,’ he added with caustic emphasis.

‘Meshach!’ cried Hannah, ‘for shame of yourself!’ Then she turned to Twemlow smiling and blushing a little.  ’Oughtn’t he?  Eh, but Mrs. John’s a great favourite of my brother’s.  And I’m sure her girls are very good and attentive.  Not a day but one or another of them calls to see me, not a day.  Eh, if they missed a day I should think the world was coming to an end.  And I’m expecting Milly to-day.  What’s made the dear child so late——­’