ch ease, and
amid such surroundings, as this particular piece of rent-collecting. He
saw what a fine thing it was to be a free man, under orders from nobody;
not many men in Bursley were in a position to accept invitations to four
o'clock tea at a day's notice. Further 5 per cent. on thirty pounds was
thirty shillings, so that if he stayed an hour--and he meant to stay an
hour--he would, while enjoying himself, be earning money steadily at the
rate of sixpence a minute.

It was the ideal of a business career.

When the kettle, having finished its scales, burst into song with an
accompaniment of castanets and vapour, and Ruth's sleeves rose and fell
as she made the tea, Denry acknowledged frankly to himself that it was
this sort of thing, and not the Brougham Street sort of thing, that he
was really born for. He acknowledged to himself humbly that this sort of
thing was "life," and that hitherto he had had no adequate idea of what
"life" was. For, with all his ability as a card and a rising man, with
all his assiduous frequenting of the Sports Club, he had not penetrated
into the upper domestic strata of Bursley society. He had never been
invited to any house where, as he put it, he would have had to mind his
p's and q's. He still remained the kind of man whom you familiarly chat
with in the street and club, and no more. His mother's fame as a
flannel-washer was against him; Brougham Street was against him; and,
chiefly, his poverty was against him. True, he had gorgeously given a
house away to an aged widow! True, he succeeded in transmitting to his
acquaintances a vague idea that he was doing well and waxing financially
from strength to strength! But the idea was too vague, too much in the
air. And save by a suit of clothes, he never gave ocular proof that he
had money to waste. He could not. It was impossible for him to compete
with even the more modest of the bloods and the blades. To keep a
satisfactory straight crease down the middle of each leg of his trousers
was all he could accomplish with the money regularly at his disposal.
The town was wafting for him to do something decisive in the matter of
what it called "the stuff."

Thus Ruth Earp was the first to introduce him to the higher intimate
civilisations, the refinements lurking behind the foul walls of Bursley.

"Sugar?" she questioned, her head on one side, her arm uplifted, her
sleeve drooping, and a bit of sugar caught like a white mouse between
the cl