However, it remained the coldest part of the whole shop, as Miss Insull’s fingers testified.  Constance established herself there more from a desire to do something, to interfere in something, than from a necessity of supervising the shop, though she had said to Samuel that she would keep an eye on the shop.  Miss Insull, whose throne was usurped, had to sit by the stove with less important creatures; she did not like it, and her underlings suffered accordingly.

It was a long day.  Towards tea-time, just before Cyril was due from school, Mr. Critchlow came surprisingly in.  That is to say, his arrival was less of a surprise to Miss Insull and the rest of the staff than to Constance.  For he had lately formed an irregular habit of popping in at tea-time, to chat with Miss Insull.  Mr. Critchlow was still defying time.  He kept his long, thin figure perfectly erect.  His features had not altered.  His hair and heard could not have been whiter than they had been for years past.  He wore his long white apron, and over that a thick reefer jacket.  In his long, knotty fingers he carried a copy of the Signal.

Evidently he had not expected to find the corner occupied by Constance.  She was sewing.

“So it’s you!” he said, in his unpleasant, grating voice, not even glancing at Miss Insull.  He had gained the reputation of being the rudest old man in Bursley.  But his general demeanour expressed indifference rather than rudeness.  It was a manner that said:  “You’ve got to take me as I am.  I may be an egotist, hard, mean, and convinced; but those who don’t like it can lump it.  I’m indifferent.”

He put one elbow on the top of the screen, showing the Signal.

“Mr. Critchlow!” said Constance, primly; she had acquired Samuel’s dislike of him.

“It’s begun!” he observed with mysterious glee.

“Has it?” Constance said eagerly.  “Is it in the paper already?”

She had been far more disturbed about her husband’s health than about the trial of Daniel Povey for murder, but her interest in the trial was of course tremendous.  And this news, that it had actually begun, thrilled her.

“Ay!” said Mr. Critchlow.  “Didn’t ye hear the Signal boy hollering just now all over the Square?”

“No,” said Constance.  For her, newspapers did not exist.  She never had the idea of opening one, never felt any curiosity which she could not satisfy, if she could satisfy it at all, without the powerful aid of the press.  And even on this day it had not occurred to her that the Signal might be worth opening.

“Ay!” repeated Mr. Critchlow.  “Seemingly it began at two o’clock—­ or thereabouts.”  He gave a moment of his attention to a noisy gas-jet, which he carefully lowered.

“What does it say?”

“Nothing yet!” said Mr. Critchlow; and they read the few brief sentences, under their big heading, which described the formal commencement of the trial of Daniel Povey for the murder of his wife.  “There was some as said,” he remarked, pushing up his spectacles, “that grand jury would alter the charge, or summat!” He laughed, grimly tolerant of the extreme absurdity.  “Ah!” he added contemplatively, turning his head to see if the assistants were listening.  They were.  It would have been too much, on such a day, to expect a strict adherence to the etiquette of the shop.