meant to die there, working: and that Denry could do what
he chose. He was a bold youth, but not bold enough to dream of quitting
his mother; besides, his share of household expenses in the cottage was
only ten shillings a week. So he rented the office; and he hired an
office-boy, partly to convey to his mother that he _should_ do what
he chose, and partly for his own private amusement.

He was thus, at an age when fellows without imagination are fraying
their cuffs for the enrichment of their elders and glad if they can
afford a cigar once a month, in possession of a business, business
premises, a clerical staff, and a private carriage drawn by an animal
unique in the Five Towns. He was living on less than his income; and in
the course of about two years, to a small extent by economies and to a
large extent by injudicious but happy investments, he had doubled the
Llandudno thousand and won the deference of the manager of the bank at
the top of St Luke's Square--one of the most unsentimental men that ever
wrote "refer to drawer" on a cheque.

And yet Denry was not satisfied. He had a secret woe, due to the facts
that he was gradually ceasing to be a card, and that he was not
multiplying his capital by two every six months. He did not understand
the money market, nor the stock market, nor even the financial article
in the _Signal_; but he regarded himself as a financial genius, and
deemed that as a financial genius he was vegetating. And as for setting
the town on fire, or painting it scarlet, he seemed to have lost the
trick of that.

II

And then one day the populace saw on his office door, beneath his
name-board, another sign:

FIVE TOWNS UNIVERSAL THRIFT CLUB. _Secretary and Manager_--E.H. MACHIN.

An idea had visited him.

Many tradesmen formed slate-clubs--goose-clubs, turkey-clubs,
whisky-clubs--in the autumn, for Christmas. Their humble customers paid
so much a week to the tradesmen, who charged them nothing for keeping
it, and at the end of the agreed period they took out the total sum in
goods--dead or alive; eatable, drinkable, or wearable. Denry conceived a
universal slate-club. He meant it to embrace each of the Five Towns. He
saw forty thousand industrial families paying weekly instalments into
his slate-club. He saw his slate-club entering into contracts with all
the principal tradesmen of the entire district, so that the members of
the slate-club could shop with slate-club tickets practically w