e, whose suit, hat, and necktie were a harmony of elegant
greys, smiled with paternal ease, and swung his cane. "Come along now!
Don't let's miss anything. Come along. Now, Edwin, you're coming,
aren't you?"

"Did you ever see such a child?" murmured Janet, adoring him.

Edwin turned to the paper boy. "Just find my father before you go," he
commanded. "Tell him I've gone, and ask him if you are to put the
shutter up." The paper boy respectfully promised obedience. And Edwin
was glad that the forbidding Hilda was there to witness his authority.

Janet went out first. Hilda hesitated; and Edwin, having taken his hat
from its hook in the cubicle, stood attending her at the aperture. He
was sorry that he could not run upstairs for a walking-stick. At last
she seemed to decide to leave, yet left with apparent reluctance. Edwin
followed, giving a final glance at the boy, who was tying a parcel
hurriedly. Mr Orgreave and his daughter were ten yards off,
arm-in-arm. Edwin fell into step with Hilda Lessways. Janet looked
round, and smiled and beckoned. "I wonder," said Edwin to himself,
"what the devil's going to happen now? I'll take my oath she stayed
behind on purpose! Well--" This swaggering audacity was within.
Without, even a skilled observer could have seen nothing but a faint,
sheepish smile. And his heart was thumping again.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE BOTTOM OF THE SQUARE.

Another procession--that of the Old Church Sunday school--came up, with
standards floating and drums beating, out of the steepness of Woodisun
Bank, and turned into Wedgwood Street, which thenceforward was loosely
thronged by procession and sightseers. The importance of the festival
was now quite manifest, for at the end of the street could be seen Saint
Luke's Square, massed with human beings in movement. Osmond Orgreave
and his daughter were lost to view in the brave crowd; but after a
little, Edwin distinctly saw Janet's sunshade leave Wedgwood Street at
the corner of the Wedgwood Institution and bob slowly into the Cock
Yard, which was a narrow thoroughfare leading to the market-place and
the Town Hall, and so to the top of Saint Luke's Square. He said
nothing, and kept straight on along Wedgwood Street past the Covered
Market.

"I hope you didn't catch cold in the rain the other night," he
remarked--grimly, as he thought.

"I should have thought it would have been you who were more likely to
catch cold,"