ah--my housekeeper,
thou know'st--'

'Not dead?'

'No. Her inna' dead; but her sister's dead, and I've give her a week's
play [holiday], and come away. Rat Edge'll see nowt o' me this side
Easter.'

Rat Edge was the name of the village, five miles off, which Dan had
honoured in his declining years.

'And where are you going to now?' asked Harold.

'I'm going to owd Sam Shawn's, by th' owd church, to beg a bed.'

'But you'll stop with us, of course?' said Harold.

'Nay, lad,' said Dan.

'Oh yes, uncle,' Maud insisted.

'Nay, lass,' said Dan.

'Indeed, you will, uncle,' said Maud positively. 'If you don't, I'll
never speak to you again.'

She had a charming fire in her eyes, had Maud.

Daniel, the old bachelor, yielded at once, but in his own style.

'I'll try it for a night, lass,' said he.

Thus it occurred that the carpet-bag was carried into Bleakridge House,
and that after some delay Harold and Maud carried off Uncle Dan with
them in the car. He sat in the luxurious tonneau behind, and Maud had
quitted her husband in order to join him. Possibly she liked the
humorous wrinkles round his grey eyes. Or it may have been the eyes
themselves. And yet Dan was nearer seventy than sixty.

The car passed everything on the road; it seemed to be overtaking
electric trams all the time.

'So ye'n been married a year?' said Uncle Dan, smiling at Maud.

'Oh yes; a year and three days. We're quite used to it.'

'Us'n be in h-ll in a minute, wench!' exclaimed Dan, calmly changing
the topic, as Harold swung the car within an inch of a brewer's dray,
and skidded slightly in the process. No anti-skidding device would
operate in that generous, oozy mud.

And, as a matter of fact, they were in Hanbridge the next
minute--Hanbridge, the centre of the religions, the pleasures, and the
vices of the Five Towns.

'Bless us!' said the old man. 'It's fifteen year and more since I were
here.'

'Harold,' said Maud, 'let's stop at the Piccadilly Cafe and have some
tea.'

'Cafe?' asked Dan. 'What be that?'

'It's a kind of a pub.' Harold threw the explanation over his shoulder
as he brought the car up with swift dexterity in front of the Misses
Callear's newly opened afternoon tea-rooms.

'Oh, well, if it's a pub,' said Uncle Dan, 'I dunna' object.'

He frankly admitted, on entering, that he had never before seen a pub
full of little tables and white cloths, and flowers, and young women,
and silver teapots, and cake-