off, he remarked fervently, in each instance, ’I can see how very interesting that is!  So thorough, so thorough!’ Even Charlotte was at length annoyed, when Mr. Cusse had exclaimed upon the ‘thoroughness’ of Ben Jonson’s works; she asked an abrupt question about some town affair, and so gave her brother an opportunity of taking the books away.  There was no flagrant offence in the man.  He spoke with passable accent, and manifested a high degree of amiability; but one could not dissociate him from the counter.  At the thought that his sister might become Mrs. Cusse, Godwin ground his teeth.  Now that he came to reflect on the subject, he found in himself a sort of unreasoned supposition that Charlotte would always remain single; it seemed so unlikely that she would be sought by a man of liberal standing, and at the same time so impossible for her to accept any one less than a gentleman.  Yet he remembered that to outsiders such fastidiousness must show in a ridiculous light.  What claim to gentility had they, the Peaks?  Was it not all a figment of his own self-conceit?  Even in education Charlotte could barely assert a superiority to Mr. Cusse, for her formal schooling had ended when she was twelve, and she had never cared to read beyond the strait track clerical inspiration.

There were other circumstances which helped to depress his estimate of the family dignity.  His brother Oliver, now seventeen, was developing into a type of young man as objectionable as it is easily recognised.  The slow, compliant boy had grown more flesh and muscle than once seemed likely, and his wits had begun to display that kind of vivaciousness which is only compatible with a nature moulded in common clay.  He saw much company, and all of low intellectual order; he had purchased a bicycle, and regarded it as a source of distinction, a means of displaying himself before shopkeepers’ daughters; he believed himself a modest tenor, and sang verses of sentimental imbecility; he took in several weekly papers of unpromising title, for the chief purpose of deciphering cryptograms, in which pursuit he had singular success.  Add to these characteristics a penchant for cheap jewellery, and Oliver Peak stands confessed.

It appeared to Godwin that his brother had leapt in a few months to these heights of vulgar accomplishment; each separate revelation struck unexpectedly upon his nerves and severely tried his temper.  When at length Oliver, waiting for supper, began to dance grotesquely to an air which local talent had somehow caught from the London music-halls, Godwin’s self-control gave way.

‘Is it your ambition,’ he asked, with fiery sarcasm, ’to join a troupe of nigger minstrels?’

Oliver was startled into the military posture of attention.  He answered, with some embarrassment: 

‘I can’t say it is.’

‘Yet anyone would suppose so,’ went on Godwin, hotly.  ’Though you are employed in a shop, I should have thought you might still aim at behaving like a gentleman.’