Sidney, not only was he an early riser, a total abstainer, a
non-smoker, and a good listener; but, in addition to the practice of
these manifold and rare virtues, he found time, even at that tender
age, to pay his tailor's bill promptly and to fold his trousers in the
same crease every night--so that he always looked neat and dignified.
Strange to say, he made no friends. Perhaps he was just a thought too
perfect for a district like the Five Towns; a sin or so might have
endeared him to the entire neighbourhood. Perhaps his loneliness was
due to his imperfect sense of humour, or perhaps to the dull, unsmiling
heaviness of his somewhat flat features.

Sidney was quite a different story. Sidney, to use his mother's phrase,
was a little jockey. His years were then eight. Fair-haired and
blue-eyed, as most little jockeys are, he had a smile and a scowl that
were equally effective in tyrannizing over both his mother and Horace,
and he was beloved by everybody. Women turned to look at him in the
street. Unhappily, his health was not good. He was afflicted by a
slight deafness, which, however, the doctor said he would grow out of;
the doctor predicted for him a lusty manhood. In the meantime, he
caught every disease that happened to be about, and nearly died of each
one. His latest acquisition had been scarlet fever. Now one afternoon,
after he had 'peeled' and his room had been disinfected, and he was
beginning to walk again, Horace came home and decided that Sidney
should be brought downstairs for tea as a treat, to celebrate his
convalescence, and that he, Horace, would carry him downstairs. Mrs
Carpole was delighted with the idea, and Sidney also, except that
Sidney did not want to be carried downstairs--he wanted to walk down.

'I think it will be better for him to walk, Horace dear,' said Mrs
Carpole, in her thin, plaintive voice. 'He can, quite well. And you
know how clumsy you are. Supposing you were to fall!'

Horace, nevertheless, in pursuance of his programme of being uncle to
Sidney, was determined to carry Sidney. And carry Sidney he did,
despite warnings and kickings. At least he carried him as far as the
turn in the steep stairs, at which point he fell, just as his
stepmother had feared, and Sidney with him. The half-brothers arrived
on the ground floor in company, but Horace, with his eleven stone two,
was on top, and the poor suffering little convalescent lay moveless and
insensible.

It took the doctor fo