gry). But he did none of these things.
He said, in his best unctuous voice:

"Thank you, m'm, I'm sure!"

And, at the journey's end, when the passengers descended, he stared a
harsh stare, without winking, full in the face of Paul Ford, and he
courteously came to the aid of Mrs Clayton Vernon. He had proclaimed Mrs
Clayton Vernon to be his ideal of a true lady, and he was heroically
loyal to his ideal, a martyr to the cause he had espoused. Such a man
was not fitted to be a tram-conductor, and the Five Towns Electric
Traction Company soon discovered his unfitness--so that he was again
thrown upon the world.

UNDER THE CLOCK

I

It was one of those swift and violent marriages which occur when the
interested parties are so severely wounded by the arrow of love that
only immediate and constant mutual nursing will save them from a fatal
issue. (So they think.) Hence when Annie came from Sneyd to inhabit the
house in Birches Street, Hanbridge, which William Henry Brachett had
furnished for her, she really knew very little of William Henry save
that he was intensely lovable, and that she was intensely in love with
him. Their acquaintance extended over three months; And she knew equally
little of the manners and customs of the Five Towns. For although Sneyd
lies but a few miles from the immense seat of pottery manufacture, it is
not as the Five Towns are. It is not feverish, grimy, rude, strenuous,
Bacchic, and wicked. It is a model village, presided over by the
Countess of Chell. The people of the Five Towns go there on Thursday
afternoons (eightpence, third class return), as if they were going to
Paradise. Thus, indeed, it was that William Henry had met Annie,
daughter of a house over whose door were writ the inviting words, "Tea
and Hot Water Provided."

There were a hundred and forty-two residences in Birches Street,
Hanbridge, all alike, differing only in the degree of cleanliness of
their window-curtains. Two front doors together, and then two
bow-windows, and then two front doors again, and so on all up the street
and all down the street. Life was monotonous, but on the whole
respectable. Annie came of an economical family, and, previous to the
wedding, she had been afraid that William Henry's ideal of economy
might fall short of her own. In this she was mistaken. In fact, she was
startlingly mistaken. It was some slight shock to her to be informed by
William Henry that owing to slackness of work the hon