d come down with a couple of thousand--well, he
might double it in five years."

"Really!"

"Yes," said Cotterill. "Look at Clare Street."

Clare Street was one of his terra-cotta masterpieces.

"You, now," said Cotterill, insinuating. "I don't expect anyone can
teach _you_ much about the value o' property in this town. You know
as well as I do. If you happened to have a couple of thousand loose--by
gosh! it's a chance in a million."

"Yes," said Denry. "I should say that was just about what it was."

"I put it before you," Cotterill proceeded, gathering way, and missing
the flavour of Denry's remark. "Because you're a friend of the family.
You're so often here. Why, it's pretty near ten years...."

Denry sighed: "I expect I come and see you all about once a fortnight
fairly regular. That makes two hundred and fifty times in ten years.
Yes...."

"A couple of thou'," said Cotterill, reflectively.

"Two hundred and fifty into two thousand--eight. Eight pounds a visit. A
shade thick, Cotterill, a shade thick. You might be half a dozen
fashionable physicians rolled into one."

Never before had he called the Councillor "Cotterill" unadorned. Me
Cotterill flushed and rose.

Denry does not appear to advantage in this interview. He failed in
magnanimity. The only excuse that can be offered for him is that Mr
Cotterill had called him "young man" once or twice too often in the
course of ten years. It is subtle.

III

"No," whispered Ruth, in all her wraps. "Don't bring it up to the door.
I'll walk down with you to the gate, and get in there."

He nodded.

They were off, together. Ruth, it had appeared, was actually staying at
the Five Towns Hotel at Knype, which at that epoch was the only hotel in
the Five Towns seriously pretending to be "first-class" in the full-page
advertisement sense. The fact that Ruth was staying at the Five Towns
Hotel impressed Denry anew. Assuredly she did things in the grand
manner. She had meant to walk down by the Park to Bursley Station and
catch the last loop-line train to Knype, and when Denry suddenly
disclosed the existence of his motor-car, and proposed to see her to her
hotel in it, she in her turn had been impressed. The astonishment in her
tone as she exclaimed: "Have you got a _motor_?" was the least in
the world naive.

Thus they departed together from the stricken house, Ruth saying
brightly to Nellie, who had reappeared in a painful state of
demoralisation, that s