sley,
self-sufficient and self-contained, had preserved its monotonous and
slow stolidity. Bursley had become a museum to him; he entered it as he
might have entered the Middle Ages, and was astonished to find that
beautiful which once he had deemed sordid and commonplace. Some of the
streets seemed like a monument of the past, a picturesque survival; the
crate-floats, drawn by swift shaggy ponies and driven by men who
balanced themselves erect on two thin boards while flying round corners,
struck him as the quaintest thing in the world.

'And what's going on nowadays in old Bosley, Miss Myatt?' he asked
expansively, trying to drop his American accent and use the dialect.

'Eh, bless us!' exclaimed Hannah, startled. 'Nothing ever happens here,
Mr. Arthur.'

He felt that nothing did happen there.

'Same here as elsewhere,' said Meshach. 'People living, and getting
childer to worry 'em, and dying. Nothing'll cure 'em of it seemingly. Is
there anything different to that in New York? Or can they do without
cemeteries?'

Twemlow laughed, and again he had the illusion of having come back to
reality after a long, hurried dream. 'Nothing seems to have changed
here,' he remarked idly.

'Nothing changed!' said Meshach. 'Nay, nay! We're up in the world. We've
got the steam-car. And we've got public baths. We wash oursen nowadays.
And there's talk of a park, and a pond with a duck on it. We're moving
with the times, my lad, and so's the rates.'

It gave him pleasure to be called 'my lad' by old Meshach. It was
piquant to him that the first earthenware factor in New York, the
Jupiter of a Fourteenth Street office, should be addressed as a
stripling. 'And where is the park to be?' he suavely inquired.

'Up by the railway station, opposite your father's old works as
was--it's a row of villas now.'

'Well,' said Twemlow. 'That sounds pretty nice. I believe I'll get you
to come around with me and show off the sights. Say!' he added suddenly,
'do you remember being on that works one day when my poor father was on
to me like half a hundred of bricks, and you said, "The boy's all right,
Mr. Twemlow"? I've never forgotten that. I've thought of it scores of
times.'

'Nay!' Meshach answered carelessly, 'I remember nothing o' that.'

Twemlow was dashed by this oblivion. It was his memory of the minute
incident which more than anything else had encouraged him to respond so
cordially to Meshach's advances in Liverpool; for he was b