one,
or exchanged a small one for a larger one, or had an accident, or
was gloriously fined in some distant part of the country for illegal
driving. Nearly all of them had spacious detached houses, with gardens
and gardeners, and patent slow-combustion grates, and porcelain
bathrooms comprising every appliance for luxurious splashing. And,
with the exception of one son who had been assisted to Valparaiso in
order that he might there seek death in the tankard without outraging
the family, they were all teetotallers--because the old man, "old
Jack," was a teetotaller. The family pyramid was based firm on the
old man. The numerous relatives held closely together like an alien
oligarchical caste in a conquered country. If they ever did quarrel,
it must have been in private.

The principal seat of business--electrical apparatus, heating
apparatus, and decorating and plumbing on a grandiose scale--in
Hanbridge, had over its immense windows the sign: "John Batchgrew
& Sons." The sign might well have read: "John Batchgrew & Sons,
Daughters, Daughters-in-law, Sons-in-law, Grandchildren, and
Great-grandchildren." The Batchgrew partners were always tendering
for, and often winning, some big contract or other for heating
and lighting and embellishing a public building or a mansion or a
manufactory. (They by no means confined their activities to the Five
Towns, having an address in London--and another in Valparaiso.) And
small private customers were ever complaining of the inaccuracy
of their accounts for small jobs. People who, in the age of Queen
Victoria's earlier widowhood, had sent for Batchgrew to repair a burst
spout, still by force of habit sent for Batchgrew to repair a burst
spout, and still had to "call at Batchgrew's" about mistakes in the
bills, which mistakes, after much argument and asseveration, were
occasionally put right. In spite of their prodigious expenditures, and
of a certain failure on the part of the public to understand "where
all the money came from," the financial soundness of the Batchgrews
was never questioned. In discussing the Batchgrews no bank-manager and
no lawyer had ever by an intonation or a movement of the eyelid hinted
that earthquakes had occurred before in the history of the world and
might occur again.

And yet old Batchgrew--admittedly the cleverest of the lot,
save possibly the Valparaiso soaker--could not be said to attend
assiduously to business. He scarcely averaged two hours a day