“It’ll be a good thing for you as well,” said Jane.  “Yes, it comes just in time.  Sherwood knew what he was doing; now and then I’ve thought he was risking too much, but he’s a clear-headed fellow.  The way he has kept things going so long in Ailie Street is really remarkable.”

“I daresay you had your share in that, Will,” said Mrs. Warburton.

“A very small one; my work has never been more than routine.  I don’t pretend to be a man of business.  If it had depended upon me, the concern would have fallen to pieces years ago, like so many others.  House after house has gone down; our turn must have come very soon.  As it is, we shall clear out with credit, and start afresh gloriously.  By the bye, don’t get any but Applegarth’s jams in future.”

“That depends,” said Jane laughing, “if we like them.”

In their simple and wholesome way of living, the Warburtons of course dined at midday, and Will, who rarely ate without appetite, surpassed himself as trencherman; nowhere had food such a savour for him as under this roof.  The homemade bread and home-grown vegetables he was never tired of praising; such fragrant and toothsome loaves, he loudly protested, were to be eaten nowhere else in England.  He began to talk of his holiday abroad, when all at once his countenance fell, his lips closed; in the pleasure of being “at home,” he had forgotten all about Norbert Franks, and very unwelcome were the thoughts which attached themselves to this recollection of his days at Trient.

“What’s the matter?” asked Jane, noticing his change of look.

“Oh, nothing—­a stupid affair.  I wrote to you about the Pomfrets and their niece.  I’m afraid that girl is an idiot.  She used the opportunity of her absence, I find, to break with Franks.  No excuse whatever; simply sent him about his business.”

“Oh!” exclaimed both the ladies, who had been interested in the artist’s love story, as narrated to them, rather badly, by Will on former occasions.

“Of course, I don’t know much about it.  But it looks bad.  Perhaps it’s the best thing that could have happened to Franks, for it may mean that he hasn’t made money fast enough to please her.”

“But you gave us quite another idea of Miss Elvan,” said his mother.

“Yes, I daresay I did.  Who knows?  I don’t pretend to understand such things.”

A little before sunset came Mr. Turnbull, who took supper at The Haws, and was fetched away by his coachman at ten o’clock.  With this old friend, who in Will’s eyes looked no older now than when he first knew him in early childhood, they talked freely of the Applegarth business, and Mr. Turnbull promised to make inquiries at once.  Of course, he took a despondent view of jam.  Jam, he inclined to think, was being overdone; after all, the country could consume only a certain quantity of even the most wholesome preserves, and a glut of jam already threatened the market.  Applegarth?  By the