witched convulsively. "I can't see that," he said. "It is
unthinkable. How can you say that?"

"Well," said Mabel, "one of the vegetables we are to eat to-night
happens to be leeks. And, of course, he, being a plumber, would have
stopped them."

Luke did not swear. He simply went up to his bedroom in silence. There
he began ticking certain subjects off on his finger. Number One, Den.
Number Two, Slippers. Number Three, Dot and Dash. Number Four,
Plumber. She would never see. She would never understand. And he was
married to it. He put up both hands and pushed his ears back into
position.

(I had fully intended to divide this chapter into sections and to
number them in plain figures. Careless of me. Thoughtless. Have a shot
at it in the next chapter? I think so. Yes, almost ...)

CHAPTER III

1

Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper occupied a large factory, with
offices and showroom attached, in Dilborough. They had no address.
The name of the firm alone was quite sufficient to find them. Some
people added the word Dilborough; some simply put Surrey; some merely
England. They were known to everybody. Their motto--"Perfect
Purity"--was in every daily paper every day. And during those weeks
when the pickle manufacturing was going on, every little hamlet within
a radius of twenty miles was aware of the fact if the wind set in that
direction.

There was no Pentlove in the firm, and no Postlethwaite, and hardly
any Sharper. An ex-schoolmaster, Diggle by name, had secured the
entire control of the business. He had no partners, though Sharper had
a small interest in the firm. He had achieved this position by
unscrupulousness and low cunning. For of real ability he had not a
trace. In fact, the staff mostly called him Cain, because he was not
able. Another point of resemblance was that he was not much of a hand
at a sacrifice. He looked after the financial side of the business,
and did a good deal of general interference in every branch of it.

The manufacturing side was under the control of Arthur Dobson, a
red-faced man who had been with the firm for twenty years. He very
wisely maintained its tradition of the very highest quality coupled
with the very highest prices. "Perfect Purity." It was an admitted
fact that Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper actually used limes in
the manufacture of lime juice. Another startling innovation was the
use of calves' feet in the preparation of calf's-foot jelly. This was