titude in
these crises was, so that he retained their respect and avoided their
pity. The outbursts still wounded him, but he was wonderfully inured.

As he sat writing under the onslaught, he said to himself, "By God! If
ever I get the chance, I'll pay you out for this some day!" And he
meant it. A peep into his mind, then, would have startled Janet
Orgreave, Mrs Nixon, and other persons who had a cult for the
wistfulness of his appealing eyes.

He steadily maintained silence, and the conflagration burnt itself out.

"Are you going to look after the printing shop, or aren't you?" Darius
growled at length.

Edwin rose and went. As he passed through the shop, Stifford, who had
in him the raw material of fine manners, glanced down, but not too
ostentatiously, at a drawer under the counter.

The printing office was more crowded than ever with men and matter.
Some of the composing was now done on the ground-floor. The whole
organism functioned, but under such difficulties as could not be allowed
to continue, even by Darius Clayhanger. Darius had finally recognised
that.

"Oh!" said Edwin, in a tone of confidential intimacy to Big James, "I
see they're getting on with the cleaning! Good. Father's beginning to
get impatient, you know. It's the bigger cases that had better be done
first."

"Right it is, Mr Edwin!" said Big James. The giant was unchanged. No
sign of grey in his hair; and his cheek was smooth, apparently his
philosophy put him beyond the touch of time.

"I say, Mr Edwin," he inquired in his majestic voice. "When are we
going to rearrange all this?" He gazed around.

Edwin laughed. "Soon," he said.

"Won't be too soon," said Big James.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER THREE.

THE NEW HOUSE.

A house stood on a hill. And that hill was Bleakridge, the summit of
the little billow of land between Bursley and Hanbridge. Trafalgar Road
passed over the crest of the billow. Bleakridge was certainly not more
than a hundred feet higher than Bursley; yet people were now talking a
lot about the advantages of living `up' at Bleakridge, `above' the
smoke, and `out' of the town, though it was not more than five minutes
from the Duck Bank. To hear them talking, one might have fancied that
Bleakridge was away in the mountains somewhere. The new steam-cars
would pull you up there in three minutes or so, every quarter of an
hour. It was really the new steam-cars that were to be the making of
Bleakrid