swered at once; 'father isn't here, and I'm all
alone.'

Ezra Brunt was indeed seldom there, counting in the matter of
attendance at chapel among what were called 'the weaker brethren.'

'I am going over to Oldcastle,' Clive explained calmly.

So began the formal courtship--more than a month after Clive had settled
in Machin Street, for he was far too discreet to engender by
precipitancy any suspicion in the haunts of scandal that his true reason
for establishing himself in his uncle's household was a certain rich
young woman who was to be found every day next door. Guided as much by
instinct as by tact, Clive approached Eva with an almost savage
simplicity and naturalness of manner, ignoring not only her father's
wealth, but all the feigned punctilio of a wooer. His face said: 'Let
there be no beating about the bush--I like you.' Hers answered: 'Good!
we will see.'

From the first he pleased her, and not least in treating her exactly as
she would have wished to be treated--namely, as a quite plain person of
that part of the middle class which is neither upper nor lower. Few men
in the Five Towns would have been capable of forgetting Ezra Brunt's
income in talking to Ezra Brunt's daughter. Fortunately, Timmis had a
proud, confident spirit--the spirit of one who, unaided, has wrested
success from the world's deathlike clutch. Had Eva the reversion of
fifty thousand a year instead of five, he, Clive, was still a prosperous
plain man, well able to support a wife in the position to which God had
called him.

Their walks together grew more and more frequent, and they became
intimate, exchanging ideas and rejoicing openly at the similarity of
those ideas. Although there was no concealment in these encounters,
still, there was a circumspection which resembled the clandestine. By a
silent understanding Clive did not enter the house at Pireford; to have
done so would have excited remark, for this house, unlike some, had
never been the rendezvous of young men; much less, therefore, did he
invade the shop. No! The chief part of their love-making (for such it
was, though the term would have roused Eva's contemptuous anger)
occurred in the streets; in this they did but follow the traditions of
their class. Thus, the idyll, so matter-of-fact upon the surface, but
within which glowed secret and adorable fires, progressed towards its
culmination. Eva, the artless fool--oh, how simple are the wisest at
times!--thought that the aff