eak to him about the affair of Susan for quite twenty years past.
Longshaw is as far from Bursley, in some ways, as San Francisco from New
York. There are people in Bursley who do not know the name of the Mayor
of Longshaw--who make a point of _not_ knowing it. Yet news travels even
from Longshaw to Bursley, by mysterious channels; and Helen Rathbone's
name had so travelled. James Ollerenshaw was glad that she was just
Helen. He had been afraid that there might be something fancy between
Helen and Rathbone--something expensive and aristocratic that went with
her dress and her parasol. He illogically liked her for being called
merely Helen--as if the credit were hers! Helen was an old Ollerenshaw
name--his grandmother's (who had been attached to the household of
Josiah Wedgwood), and his aunt's. Helen was historic in his mind. And,
further, it could not be denied that Rathbone was a fine old Five Towns
name too.

He was very illogical that afternoon; he threw over the principles of a
lifetime, arguing from particulars to generals exactly like a girl. He
had objected, always, to the expensive and the aristocratic. He was
proud of his pure plebeian blood, as many plebeians are; he gloried in
it. He disliked show, with a calm and deep aversion. He was a plain man
with a simple, unostentatious taste for money. The difference between
Helen's name and her ornamental raiment gave him pleasure in the name.
But he had not been examining her for more than half a minute when he
began to find pleasure in her rich clothes (rich, that is, to him!).
Quite suddenly he, at the age of sixty, abandoned without an effort his
dear prejudice against fine feathers, and began, for the first time, to
take joy in sitting next to a pretty and well-dressed woman. And all
this, not from any broad, philosophic perception that fine feathers have
their proper part in the great scheme of cosmic evolution; but because
the check dress suited her, and the heavy, voluptuous parasol suited
her, and the long black gloves were inexplicably effective. Women grow
old; women cease to learn; but men, never.

As for Helen, she liked him. She had liked him for five years, ever
since her mother had pointed him out on the platform of Knype Railway
Station. She saw him closer now. He was older than she had been
picturing him; indeed, the lines on his little, rather wizened face, and
the minute sproutings of grey-white hair in certain spots on his reddish
chin, where h