ould
discuss Bursley and Bursley folk with a shrewd sagacity and an intimate
and complete knowledge of circumstance not to be found in combination
anywhere outside a small industrial town. To listen to Sneyd and Mrs
Peake, when each sought to distance the other in tracing a genealogy,
was to learn the history of a whole community and the secret springs of
the actions which constituted its evolution.

"Haven't you any news for me?" asked Peake, during a pause in the talk.
At the same moment the door opened and Mrs Lovatt entered. "Eh, Auntie
Lovatt," he went on, greeting her, "we'd given ye up." Mrs Lovatt
usually visited the Peakes on Saturday evenings, but she came later than
her husband.

"Eh, but I was bound to come and see you to-night, Uncle Peake, after
your visit to the great city. Well, you're looking bonny." She shook
hands with him warmly, her face beaming goodwill, and then she kissed
her half-sister and Ella, and told Sneyd that she had seen him that
morning in the market-place.

Mrs Peake and Mrs Lovatt differed remarkably in character and
appearance, though this did not prevent them from being passionately
attached to one another. Mrs Lovatt was small, and rather plain; content
to be her husband's wife, she had no activities beyond her own home. Mrs
Peake was tall, and strikingly handsome in spite of her fifty years,
with a brilliant complexion and hair still raven black; her energy was
exhaustless, and her spirit indomitable; she was the moving force of the
Wesleyan Sunday School, and there was not a man in England who could
have driven her against her will. She had a fortune of her own. Enoch
Lovatt treated her with the respect due to an equal who had more than
once proved herself capable of insisting on independence and equal
rights in the most pugnacious manner.

"Well, auntie," said Peake, "I've won eleven and fourpence to-night, and
my wife's collared it all from me." He laughed with glee.

"Eh, you should be ashamed!" said Mrs Lovatt, embracing the company in a
glance of reproof which rested last on Enoch Lovatt. She was a
Methodist of the strictest, and her husband happened to be chapel
steward. "If I had my way with those cards I'd soon play with them; I'd
play with them at the back of the fire. Now you were asking for news
when I came in, Uncle Peake. Have they told you about the new organ?
We're quite full of it at our house."

"No," said Peake, "they haven't."

"What!" she cried reproa