kissed her again. He could well afford to be magnanimous.

Mr Bittenger ploughed the seas alone to New York.

But supposing that Vera had not interfered, what would have happened?
That is the unanswerable query which torments the superstitious little
brain of Vera.

THE BURGLARY

I

Lady Dain said: 'Jee, if that portrait stays there much longer, you'll
just have to take me off to Pirehill one of these fine mornings.'

Pirehill is the seat of the great local hospital; but it is also the
seat of the great local lunatic asylum; and when the inhabitants of the
Five Towns say merely 'Pirehill', they mean the asylum.

'I do declare I can't fancy my food now-a-days,' said Lady Dain, 'and
it's all that portrait!' She stared plaintively up at the immense
oil-painting which faced her as she sat at the breakfast-table in her
spacious and opulent dining-room.

Sir Jehoshaphat made no remark.

Despite Lady Dain's animadversions upon it, despite the undoubted fact
that it was generally disliked in the Five Towns, the portrait had cost
a thousand pounds (some said guineas), and though not yet two years old
it was probably worth at least fifteen hundred in the picture market.
For it was a Cressage; and not only was it a Cressage--it was one of
the finest Cressages in existence.

It marked the summit of Sir Jehoshaphat's career. Sir Jehoshaphat's
career was, perhaps, the most successful and brilliant in the entire
social history of the Five Towns. This famous man was the principal
partner in Dain Brothers. His brother was dead, but two of Sir Jee's
sons were in the firm. Dain Brothers were the largest manufacturers of
cheap earthenware in the district, catering chiefly for the American
and Colonial buyer. They had an extremely bad reputation for cutting
prices. They were hated by every other firm in the Five Towns, and, to
hear rival manufacturers talk, one would gather the impression that Sir
Jee had acquired a tremendous fortune by systematically selling goods
under cost. They were also hated by between eighteen and nineteen
hundred employees. But such hatred, however virulent, had not marred
the progress of Sir Jee's career.

He had meant to make a name and he had made it. The Five Towns might
laugh at his vulgar snobbishness. The Five Towns might sneer at his
calculated philanthropy. But he was, nevertheless, the best-known man
in the Five Towns, and it was precisely his snobbishness and his
philanthropy whic