I tell you. It's absolutely
ridiculous. Who does he think will come to the place? He's out of
his mind--and it's drink; that's what it is! Going into the Liquor
Vaults at ten o'clock in the morning! That's where he gets his
ideas--out of whiskey--or brandy! But he's not going to make a fool
of me--"

"Oh dear!" sighed Alvina, laughing herself into composure and a
little weariness. "I know it's _perfectly_ ridiculous. We shall have
to stop him."

"I've said all I can say," blurted Miss Pinnegar.

As soon as James came in to a meal, the two women attacked him.

"But father," said Alvina, "there'll be nobody to come."

"Plenty of people--plenty of people," said her father. "Look at The
Shakespeare's Head, in Knarborough."

"Knarborough! Is this Knarborough!" blurted Miss Pinnegar. "Where
are the business men here? Where are the foreigners coming here for
business, where's our lace-trade and our stocking-trade?"

"There _are_ business men," said James. "And there are ladies."

"Who," retorted Miss Pinnegar, "is going to give half-a-crown for a
tea? They expect tea and bread-and-butter for fourpence, and cake
for sixpence, and apricots or pineapple for ninepence, and
ham-and-tongue for a shilling, and fried ham and eggs and jam and
cake as much as they can eat for one-and-two. If they expect a
knife-and-fork tea for a shilling, what are you going to give them
for half-a-crown?"

"I know what I shall offer," said James. "And we may make it two
shillings." Through his mind flitted the idea of 1/11-1/2--but he
rejected it. "You don't realize that I'm catering for a higher class
of custom--"

"But there _isn't_ any higher class in Woodhouse, father," said
Alvina, unable to restrain a laugh.

"If you create a supply you create a demand," he retorted.

"But how can you create a supply of better class people?" asked
Alvina mockingly.

James took on his refined, abstracted look, as if he were
preoccupied on higher planes. It was the look of an obstinate little
boy who poses on the side of the angels--or so the women saw it.

Miss Pinnegar was prepared to combat him now by sheer weight of
opposition. She would pitch her dead negative will obstinately
against him. She would not speak to him, she would not observe his
presence, she was stone deaf and stone blind: there _was_ no James.
This nettled him. And she miscalculated him. He merely took another
circuit, and rose another flight higher on the spiral of his
spir