here is going on all the time in the
Five Towns.

Visible from the window of the Wrackgarths' parlour was that colossal
statue of Commerce which rears itself aloft at the point where Oodge
Lane is intersected by Blackstead Street. Commerce, executed in glossy
Doultonware by some sculptor or sculptors unknown, stands pointing her
thumb over her shoulder towards the chimneys of far Hanbridge. When I
tell you that the circumference of that thumb is six inches, and the
rest to scale, you will understand that the statue is one of the prime
glories of Bursley. There were times when Emily Wrackgarth seemed to
herself as vast and as lustrously impressive as it. There were other
times when she seemed to herself as trivial and slavish as one of
those performing fleas she had seen at the Annual Ladies' Evening Fete
organised by the Bursley Mutual Burial Club. Extremist!

She was now stirring the pudding with her left hand. The ingredients
had already been mingled indistinguishably in that rich, undulating
mass of tawniness which proclaims perfection. But Emily was determined
to give her left hand, not less than her right, what she called "a
doing." Emily was like that.

At mid-day, when her brother came home from the Works, she was still
at it.

"Brought those scruts with you?" she asked, without looking up.

"That's a fact," he said, dipping his hand into the sagging pocket of
his coat.

It is perhaps necessary to explain what scruts are. In the daily
output of every potbank there are a certain proportion of flawed
vessels. These are cast aside by the foreman, with a lordly gesture,
and in due course are hammered into fragments. These fragments, which
are put to various uses, are called scruts; and one of the uses they
are put to is a sentimental one. The dainty and luxurious Southerner
looks to find in his Christmas pudding a wedding-ring, a gold thimble,
a threepenny-bit, or the like. To such fal-lals the Five Towns would
say fie. A Christmas pudding in the Five Towns contains nothing but
suet, flour, lemon-peel, cinnamon, brandy, almonds, raisins--and
two or three scruts. There is a world of poetry, beauty, romance, in
scruts--though you have to have been brought up on them to appreciate
it. Scruts have passed into the proverbial philosophy of the district.
"Him's a pudden with more scruts than raisins to 'm" is a criticism
not infrequently heard. It implies respect, even admiration. Of Emily
Wrackgarth herself people