rushes to the door.

I crept out of the dining-room, determined not to let my mother know
that I had secretly viewed the supper-table. And as I was crossing the
lobby to the drawing-room there was a third ring at the door, and a
third time my mother rushed out of the kitchen.

'By Jove!' I thought. 'Suppose it's Agnes. What a scene!'

And trembling with expectation I opened the door. It was Mr Nixon.

Now, Mr Nixon was an old friend of the family's, a man of forty-nine or
fifty, with a reputation for shrewdness and increasing wealth. He owned
a hundred and seventy-five cottages in the town, having bought them
gradually in half-dozens, and in rows; he collected the rents himself,
and attended to the repairs himself, and was celebrated as a good
landlord, and as being almost the only man in Bursley who had made
cottage property pay. He lived alone in Commerce Street, and, though
not talkative, was usually jolly, with one or two good stories tucked
away in the corners of his memory. He was my mother's trustee, and had
morally aided her in the troublous times before my father's early death.

'Well, young man,' cried he. 'So you're back in owd Bosley!' It amused
him to speak the dialect a little occasionally.

And he brought his burly, powerful form into the lobby.

I greeted him as jovially as I could, and then he shook hands with my
mother, neither of them speaking.

'Mr Nixon is come for supper, Philip,' said my mother.

I liked Mr Nixon, but I was not too well pleased by this information,
for I wanted to talk confidentially to my mother. I had a task before
me with my mother, and here Mr Nixon was plunging into the supper. I
could not break it gently to my mother that I was engaged to a strange
young woman in the presence of Mr Nixon. Mr Nixon had been in to supper
several times during previous visits of mine, but never on the first
night.

However, I had to make the best of it. And we sat down and began on the
ham, the sausages, the eggs, the crumpets, the toast, the jams, the
mince-tarts, the Stilton, and the celery. But we none of us ate very
much, despite my little plump mother's protestations.

My suspicion was that perhaps something had gone slightly wrong with my
mother's affairs, and that Mr Nixon was taking the first opportunity to
explain things to me. But such a possibility did not interest me, for I
could easily afford to keep my mother and a wife too. I was still
preoccupied in my engagement--and