‘Steve,’ she said, ‘are we friends?’

‘I should think we were!’ he replied, returning her kiss heartily.  He had won.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked him.

’Bittenger and I are just going to have a real round with the gloves.  It’s part of his cure for my indigestion, you know.  He says there’s nothing like it.  I’ve only just been able to get gloves.  Tinsley brought them up just now.  And so we sort of thought we’d like to have a go at once.’

‘Why wouldn’t you let me into the dining-room?’

’My child, the table was up against the door.  And I fancied, perhaps, you wouldn’t be exactly charmed, so I—­’

‘Stephen,’ she said, in her most persuasive voice, ’will you do something to please me?’

‘What is it?’

‘Will you?’

A pause.

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘Don’t box tonight.’

‘Oh—­well!  What will Bittenger think?’

Another pause.

‘Never mind!  You don’t want me to box, really?’

‘I don’t want you to box—­not tonight.’  ‘Agreed, my chuck!’ And he kissed her again.  He could well afford to be magnanimous.

Mr Bittenger ploughed the seas alone to New York.

But supposing that Vera had not interfered, what would have happened?  That is the unanswerable query which torments the superstitious little brain of Vera.

THE BURGLARY

I

Lady Dain said:  ’Jee, if that portrait stays there much longer, you’ll just have to take me off to Pirehill one of these fine mornings.’

Pirehill is the seat of the great local hospital; but it is also the seat of the great local lunatic asylum; and when the inhabitants of the Five Towns say merely ‘Pirehill’, they mean the asylum.

‘I do declare I can’t fancy my food now-a-days,’ said Lady Dain, ‘and it’s all that portrait!’ She stared plaintively up at the immense oil-painting which faced her as she sat at the breakfast-table in her spacious and opulent dining-room.

Sir Jehoshaphat made no remark.

Despite Lady Dain’s animadversions upon it, despite the undoubted fact that it was generally disliked in the Five Towns, the portrait had cost a thousand pounds (some said guineas), and though not yet two years old it was probably worth at least fifteen hundred in the picture market.  For it was a Cressage; and not only was it a Cressage—­it was one of the finest Cressages in existence.

It marked the summit of Sir Jehoshaphat’s career.  Sir Jehoshaphat’s career was, perhaps, the most successful and brilliant in the entire social history of the Five Towns.  This famous man was the principal partner in Dain Brothers.  His brother was dead, but two of Sir Jee’s sons were in the firm.  Dain Brothers were the largest manufacturers of cheap earthenware in the district, catering chiefly for