‘I will say this for John,’ asserted Meshach, as though the little housewife had not been speaking, ‘I will say this for John,’ he repeated, settling himself by the hob.  ’He knew how to pick up a d——­d fine woman.’

‘Meshach!’ Hannah expostulated again.

Something in the excellence of Meshach’s cigars, in his way of calling a woman fine, in the dry, aloof masculinity of his attitude towards Hannah, gave Twemlow to reflect that in the fundamental deeps of experience New York was perhaps not so far ahead of the old Five Towns after all.

There was a fluttering in the lobby, and Millicent ran into the parlour, hurriedly, negligently.

‘I can’t stay a minute, auntie,’ the vivacious girl burst out in the unmistakable accents of condescending pertness, and then she caught sight of the well-dressed, good-looking man in the corner, and her bearing changed as though by a conjuring trick.  She flushed sensitively, stroked her blue serge frock, composed her immature features to the mask of the finished lady paying a call, and summoned every faculty to aid her in looking her best.  ’So this chit is the daughter of our admired Leonora,’ thought Twemlow.

‘I suppose you don’t remember old Mr. Twemlow, my dear?’ said Hannah after she had proudly introduced her niece.

’Oh, auntie! how silly you are!  Of course I remember him quite well.  I really can’t stay, auntie.’

‘You’ll stay and drink this cup of tea with me,’ Hannah insisted firmly, and Milly was obliged to submit.  It was not often that the old lady exercised authority; but on that afternoon the famous New York visitor was just as much an audience for Hannah as for Hannah’s greatniece.

Twemlow could think of nothing to say to this pretty pouting creature who had rushed in from a later world and dissipated the atmosphere of mediaevalism, and so he addressed himself to Meshach upon the eternal subject of the staple trade.  The women at the table talked quietly but self-consciously, and Twemlow saw Milly forced to taste parkin after three refusals.  Even while still masticating the viscid unripe parkin, Milly rose to depart.  She bent down and dutifully grazed with her lips the cheek of the parkin-maker.  ‘Good-bye, auntie; good-bye, uncle.’  And in an elegant, mincing tone, ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Twemlow.’

‘I suppose you’ve just got to be on time at the next place?’ he said quizzically, smiling at her vivid youth in spite of himself.  ’Something very important?’

‘Oh, very important!’ she laughed archly, reddening, and then was gone; and Aunt Hannah followed her to the door.

‘What th’ old folks lose,’ murmured Meshach, apparently to the fire, as he put his half-consumed cigar into a meerschaum holder, ’goes to the profit of young Burgess, as is waiting outside the Bank at top o’ th’ Square.’

‘I see,’ said Twemlow, and thought primly that in his day such laxities were not permitted.