u do not know her if you think she
did. Gilbert came in, anxious and alarmed. Mrs Clayton Vernon left them
together. The mother explained matters to the son, and in an instant of
time the ruin of two magnificent potatoes was at the back of the fire.
Then, without saluting Mrs Clayton Vernon, Mrs Swann fled.

HALF-A-SOVEREIGN

The scene was the up-platform of Knype railway station on a summer
afternoon, and, more particularly, that part of the platform round about
the bookstall. There were three persons in the neighbourhood of the
bookstall. The first was the principal bookstall clerk, who was folding
with extraordinary rapidity copies of the special edition of the
_Staffordshire Signal_; the second was Mr Sandbach, an earthenware
manufacturer, famous throughout the Five Towns for his ingenious
invention of teapots that will pour the tea into the cup instead of all
over the table; and a very shabby man, whom Mr Sandbach did not know.
This very shabby man was quite close to the bookstall, while Mr Sandbach
stood quite ten yards away. Mr Sandbach gazed steadily at the man, but
the man, ignoring Mr Sandbach, allowed dreamy and abstracted eyes to
rest on the far distance, where a locomotive or so was impatiently
pushing and pulling waggons as an excitable mother will drag and shove
an inoffensive child. The platform as a whole was sparsely peopled; the
London train had recently departed, and the station was suffering from
the usual reaction; only a local train was signalled.

Mr Gale, a friend of Mr Sandbach's, came briskly on to the platform from
the booking-office, caught sight of Mr Sandbach, and accosted him.

"Hello, Sandbach!"

"How do, Gale?"

To a slight extent they were rivals in the field of invention. But both
had succeeded in life, and both had the alert and prosperous air of
success. Born about the same time, they stood nearly equal after forty
years of earthly endeavour.

"What are you doing here?" asked Gale, casually.

"I've come to meet someone off the Crewe train."

"And I'm going by it--to Derby," said Mr Gale. "They say it's thirteen
minutes late."

"Look here," said Mr Sandbach, taking no notice of this remark, "you see
that man there?"

"Which one--by the bookstall?"

"Yes."

"Well, what about him?"

"I bet you you can't make him move from where he is--no physical force,
of course."

Mr Gale hesitated an instant, and then his eye glistened with response
to the challenge, and