o the County
Ground. Stott could ride the two flat miles which separated him from the
scene of his work in ten minutes, and Ailesworth station is only a mile
beyond. So when he found that there was a suitable cottage to let in
Stoke, he looked no farther for a home; he was completely satisfied.

Stott's absorption in any matter that was occupying his mind made him
exceedingly careless about the detail of his affairs. He took the first
cottage that offered when he looked for a home, he took the first woman
who offered when he looked for a wife.

Stott was not an attractive man to women. He was short and plain, and he
had an appearance of being slightly deformed, a "monkeyish" look, due to
his build and his long arms. Still, he was famous, and might, doubtless,
have been accepted by a dozen comely young women for that reason, even
after his accident. But if Stott was unattractive to women, women were
even more unattractive to Stott. "No opinion of women?" he used to say.
"Ever seen a gel try to throw a cricket ball? You 'ave? Well, ain't that
enough to put you off women?" That was Stott's intellectual standard;
physically, he had never felt drawn to women.

Ellen Mary Jakes exhibited no superiority over her sisters in the matter
of throwing a cricket ball. She was a friend of Ginger's mother, and
she was a woman of forty-two, who had long since been relegated to some
remote shelf of the matrimonial exchange. But her physical disadvantages
were outbalanced by her mental qualities. Ellen Mary was not a
book-worm, she read nothing but the evening and Sunday papers, but she
had a reasoning and intelligent mind.

She had often contemplated the state of matrimony, and had made more
than one tentative essay in that direction. She had walked out with
three or four sprigs of the Ailesworth bourgeoisie in her time, and the
shadow of middle-age had crept upon her before she realised that however
pliant her disposition, her lack of physical charm put her at the mercy
of the first bright-eyed rival. At thirty-five Ellen had decided, with
admirable philosophy, that marriage was not for her, and had assumed,
with apparent complacency, the outward evidences of a dignified
spinsterhood. She had discarded gay hats and ribbons, imitation
jewellery, unreliable cheap shoes, and chill diaphanous stockings, and
had found some solace for her singleness in more comfortable and
suitable apparel.

When Ellen, a declared spinster of seven years