and, recognising the equality of the antagonists, leaned neither to one
side nor to the other. At intervals, however, the legend of the feud was
embroidered with new and effective detail in the mouth of some inventive
gossip, and by degrees it took high place among those piquant social
histories which illustrate the real life of a town, and which parents
recount to their children with such zest in moods of reminiscence.

When George Christopher Timmis buried his wife, Ezra Brunt, as a near
neighbour, was asked to the funeral. 'The cortege will move at 1.30,'
ran the printed invitation, and at 1.15 Brunt's carriage was decorously
in place behind the hearse and the two mourning-coaches. The demeanour
of the chemist and the draper towards each other was a sublime answer to
the demands of the occasion; some people even said that the breach had
been healed, but these were not of the discerning.

The most active person at the funeral was the chemist's only nephew,
Clive Timmis, partner in a small but prosperous firm of majolica
manufacturers at Bursley. Clive, who was seldom seen in Hanbridge, made
a favourable impression on everyone by his pleasing, unaffected manner
and his air of discretion and success. He was a bachelor of thirty-two,
and lived in lodgings at Bursley. On the return of the funeral-party
from the cemetery, Clive Timmis found Brunt's daughter Eva in his
uncle's house. Uninvited, she had left her place in the private room at
her father's shop in order to assist Timmis's servant Sarah in the
preparation of that solid and solemn repast which must inevitably follow
every proper interment in the Five Towns. Without false modesty, she
introduced herself to one or two of the men who had surprised her at her
work, and then quietly departed just as they were sitting down to table
and Sarah had brought in the hot tea-cakes. Clive Timmis saw her only
for a moment, but from that moment she was his one thought. During the
evening, which he spent alone with his uncle, he behaved in every
particular as a nephew should, yet he was acting a part; his real self
roved after Ezra Brunt's daughter, wherever she might be. Clive had
never fallen in love, though several times in his life he had tried hard
to do so. He had long wished to marry--wished ardently; he had even got
into the way of regarding every woman he met--and he met many--in the
light of a possible partner. 'Can it be _she_? he had asked himself a
thousand times, an