by and saw him staring at the trees, but he did not
ask her the way to the river.

* * * * *

From a shy youth, Josiah Wedgwood had evolved into a man of affairs, and
was surely doing a man's work. He had spent about five years making
curious earthenware ornaments for the Sheffield cutlers; and then with
full one thousand pounds he had come back to Burslem and started
business on his own account. He had read and studied and worked, and he
had evolved. He was an educated man; that is to say, he was a competent
and useful man. He determined to free Burslem from the taint that had
fallen upon it. "Burslem?" he once wrote to Sarah, "Burslem? the name
shall yet be a symbol of all that is beautiful, honest and true; we
shall see! I am a potter--yes, but I'll be the best one that England has
ever seen."

And the flower-garden was one of the moves in the direction of
evolution.

Occasionally, Josiah made visits to Cheshire, riding forty miles on
horseback, for he now had horses of his own. The roads in Spring and
Winter were desperately bad, but Josiah by persistent agitation had
gotten Parliament to widen and repair, at the expense of several hundred
pounds, the road between Lawton in Cheshire to Cliffe Bank at
Staffordshire.

And it so happened that this was the road which led from where Wedgwood
lived to where lived his lady-love. Josiah and Sarah had many a smile
over the fact that Cupid had taken a hand in road-building. Evidently
Dan Cupid is a very busy and versatile individual.

Sarah was her father's housekeeper. She had one brother, a young man of
meager qualities. These two were joint heirs to their father's estate of
something over twenty thousand pounds. Josiah and Sarah thought what a
terrible blow it would be if this brother should die and Sarah thus have
her dowry doubled!

The Squire depended upon Sarah in many ways. She wrote his letters and
kept his accounts; and his fear for her future was founded on a selfish
wish not to lose her society and services, quite as much as a solicitude
for her happiness.

For a year after Josiah had exploded his bombshell by asking Squire
Richard for his daughter's hand, the lover was forbidden the house.

Then the Squire relaxed so far that he allowed Josiah and Sarah to meet
in his presence. And finally there was a frank three-cornered
understanding. And that was that, when Josiah could show that he had ten
thousand pounds in his own