markets, libraries, baths, and similar haunts of
luxury; one was a bank. He thought that Turnhill High Street compared
very well with Derby. He would have preferred it to be less changed. If
the High Street was thus changed, everything would be changed,
including Child Row. The sole phenomenon that recalled his youth
(except the Town Hall) was the peculiar smell of oranges and apples
floating out on the frosty air from holly-decorated greengrocers' shops.

He passed through the Market Square, noting that sinister freak, the
Jubilee Tower, and came to Child Row. The first building on your right
as you enter Child Row from the square is the Primitive Methodist
Chapel. Yes, it was still there; Primitive Methodism had not failed in
Turnhill because Toby Hall had deserted the cause three-and-twenty
years ago! But something serious had happened to the structure.
Gradually Toby realized that its old face had been taken out and a new
one put in, the classic pillars had vanished, and a series of Gothic
arches had been substituted by way of portico; a pretty idea, but not
to Toby's liking. It was another change, another change! He crossed the
street and proceeded downwards in the obscurity, and at length halted
and peered with his little blue eyes at a small house (one of twins) on
the other side from where he stood. That house, at any rate, was
unchanged. It was a two-storeyed house, with a semicircular fanlight
over a warped door of grained panelling. The blind of the window to the
left of the door was irradiated from within, proving habitation.

'I wonder--' ran Toby's thought. And he unhesitatingly crossed the
street again, towards it, feeling first for the depth of the kerbstone
with his umbrella. He had a particular and special interest in that
house (No. 11 it was--and is), for, four-and-twenty years ago he had
married it.

II

Four-and-twenty years ago Toby Hall (I need not say that his proper
Christian name was Tobias) had married Miss Priscilla Bratt, then a
calm and self-reliant young woman of twenty-three, and Priscilla had
the house, together with a certain income, under the will of her
father. The marriage was not the result of burning passion on either
side. It was a union of two respectabilities, and it might have
succeeded as well as such unions generally do succeed, if Priscilla had
not too frequently mentioned the fact that the house they lived in was
hers. He knew that the house was hers. The whole w