s
heart was beating.

Mrs Machin merely shook her head. Not often did her son deprive her of
words, but this theatrical culmination of his home-coming really did
leave her speechless.

Late that night rows of piles of sovereigns decorated the oval table in
the parlour.

"A thousand and eleven," said Denry, at length, beneath the lamp.
"There's fifteen missing yet. We'll look for 'em to-morrow."

For several days afterwards Mrs Machin was still picking up sovereigns.
Two had even gone outside the parlour, and down the two steps into the
backyard, and finding themselves unable to get back, had remained there.

And all the town knew that the unique Denry had thought of the idea of
returning home to his mother with a hat-box crammed with sovereigns.

This was Denry's "latest," and it employed the conversation of the
borough for I don't know how long.

CHAPTER VI

HIS BURGLARY

I

The fact that Denry Machin decided not to drive behind his mule to Sneyd
Hall showed in itself that the enterprise of interviewing the Countess
of Chell was not quite the simple daily trifling matter that he strove
to pretend it was.

The mule was a part of his more recent splendour. It was aged seven, and
it had cost Denry ten pounds. He had bought it off a farmer whose wife
"stood" St Luke's Market. His excuse was that he needed help in getting
about the Five Towns in pursuit of cottage rents, for his business of a
rent-collector had grown. But for this purpose a bicycle would have
served equally well, and would not have cost a shilling a day to feed,
as the mule did, nor have shied at policemen, as the mule nearly always
did. Denry had bought the mule simply because he had been struck all of
a sudden with the idea of buying the mule. Some time previously Jos
Curtenty (the Deputy-Mayor, who became Mayor of Bursley on the Earl of
Chell being called away to govern an Australian colony) had made an
enormous sensation by buying a flock of geese and driving them home
himself. Denry did not like this. He was indeed jealous, if a large mind
can be jealous. Jos Curtenty was old enough to be his grandfather, and
had been a recognised "card" and "character" since before Denry's birth.
But Denry, though so young, had made immense progress as a card, and
had, perhaps justifiably, come to consider himself as the premier card,
the very ace, of the town. He felt that some reply was needed to
Curtenty's geese, and the mule was his reply. It