year. Why could he not as easily have said four as two to his
mother? The simple answer is that he was afraid to say four. It was as
if he ought to blush before his mother for being so plutocratic, his
mother who had passed most of her life in hard toil to gain a few
shillings a week. Four thousand seemed so fantastic! And in fact the
Thrift Club, which he had invented in a moment, had arrived at a
prodigious success, with its central offices in Hanbridge and its branch
offices in the other four towns, and its scores of clerks and collectors
presided over by Mr Penkethman. It had met with opposition. The mighty
said that Denry was making an unholy fortune under the guise of
philanthropy. And to be on the safe side the Countess of Chell had
resigned her official patronage of the club and given her shares to the
Pirehill Infirmary, which had accepted the high dividends on them
without the least protest. As for Denry, he said that he had never set
out to be a philanthropist nor posed as one, and that his unique
intention was to grow rich by supplying a want, like the rest of them,
and that anyhow there was no compulsion to belong to his Thrift Club.
Then letters in his defence from representatives of the thousands and
thousands of members of the club rained into the columns of the
_Signal_, and Denry was the most discussed personage in the county.
It was stated that such thrift clubs, under various names, existed in
several large towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire. This disclosure
rehabilitated Denry completely in general esteem, for whatever obtains
in Yorkshire and Lancashire must be right for Staffordshire; but it
rather dashed Denry, who was obliged to admit to himself that after all
he had not invented the Thrift Club. Finally the hundreds of tradesmen
who had bound themselves to allow a discount of twopence in the shilling
to the club (sole source of the club's dividends) had endeavoured to
revolt. Denry effectually cowed them by threatening to establish
co-operative stores--there was not a single co-operative store in the
Five Towns. They knew he would have the wild audacity to do it.

Thenceforward the progress of the Thrift Club had been unruffled. Denry
waxed amazingly in importance. His mule died. He dared not buy a proper
horse and dogcart, because he dared not bring such an equipage to the
front door of his mother's four-and-sixpenny cottage. So he had taken to
cabs. In all exterior magnificence and lavishness h