know that."

"Yes, but--" Edwin hesitatingly drawled.

"But what?"

"All right. Ten," Edwin agreed. "But it's not fair. You've got a rare
start on me."

"Rats!" said the Sunday, with finality. In the pronunciation of this
word the difference between his accent and Edwin's came out clear. The
Sunday's accent was less local; there was a hint of a short "e" sound in
the "a," and a briskness about the consonants, that Edwin could never
have compassed. The Sunday's accent was as carelessly superior as his
clothes. Evidently the Sunday had some one at home who had not learnt
the art of speech in the Five Towns.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE.

He began to outline a scheme, in which perpendicular expectoration
figured, for accurately deciding the winner, and a complicated argument
might have ensued about this, had it not soon become apparent that
Edwin's boat was going to be handsomely beaten, despite the joyous
efforts of the little child. The horse that would die but would not
give up, was only saved from total subsidence at every step by his
indomitable if aged spirit. Edwin handed over the ten marbles even
before the other boat had arrived at the bridge.

"Here," he said. "And you may as well have these, too," adding five
more to the ten, all he possessed. They were not the paltry marble of
to-day, plaything of infants, but the majestic "rinker," black with
white spots, the king of marbles in an era when whole populations
practised the game. Edwin looked at them half regretfully as they lay
in the Sunday's hands. They seemed prodigious wealth in those hands,
and he felt somewhat as a condemned man might feel who bequeaths his
jewels on the scaffold. Then there was a rattle, and a tumour grew out
larger on the Sunday's thigh.

The winning boat, long preceded by its horse, crawled under the bridge
and passed northwards to the sea, laden with crates of earthenware. And
then the loser, with the little girl's father and mother and her
brothers and sisters, and her kitchen, drawing-room, and bedroom, and
her smoking chimney and her memories and all that was hers, in the stern
of it, slid beneath the boys' down-turned faces while the whip cracked
away beyond the bridge. They could see, between the whitened
tarpaulins, that the deep belly of the craft was filled with clay.

"Where does that there clay come from?" asked Edwin. For not merely was
he hone