an expression on his mouth as so soft and friendly a mouth could be made
to take, and he hadn't been in it long before he passed out altogether
beyond the line of thinking his mother had laid down for him, and
definitely grew up.

The office was in New York, far enough away from Clark for him to be at
home only for the Sundays. His mother put him to board with her brother
Charles, a clergyman, the rector of the Church of Angelic Refreshment
at the back of Tenth Street, and the teapot out of which Uncle Charles
poured his tea at his hurried and uncomfortable meals--for he practised
the austerities and had no wife--dribbled at its spout. Hold it as
carefully as one might it dribbled at its spout, and added to the
confused appearance of the table by staining the cloth afresh every time
it was used.

Mr. Twist, who below the nose was nothing but kindliness and generosity,
his slightly weak chin, his lavishly-lipped mouth, being all amiability
and affection, above the nose was quite different. In the middle came
his nose, a nose that led him to improve himself, to read and meditate
the poets, to be tenacious in following after the noble; and above were
eyes in which simplicity sat side by side with appreciation; and above
these was the forehead like a dome; and behind this forehead were
inventions.

He had not been definitely aware that he was inventive till he came into
daily contact with Uncle Charles's teapot. In his boyhood he had often
fixed up little things for Edith,--she was three years older than he,
and was even then canning and preserving and ironing,--little
simplifications and alleviations of her labour; but they had been just
toys, things that had amused him to put together and that he forgot as
soon as they were done. But the teapot revealed to him clearly what his
forehead was there for. He would not and could not continue, being the
soul of considerateness, to spill tea on Uncle Charles's table-cloth at
every meal--they had tea at breakfast, and at luncheon, and at
supper--and if he were thirsty he spilled it several times at every
meal. For a long time he coaxed the teapot. He was thoughtful with it.
He handled it with the most delicate precision. He gave it time. He
never hurried it. He never filled it more than half full. And yet at the
end of every pouring, out came the same devastating dribble on to the
cloth.

Then he went out and bought another teapot, one of a different pattern,
with a curved