in course
of action. He declined the scheme, and declined again. Suddenly a boy
shouted:

'Thee dars' na'!'

'I dare,' was the drawled, smiling answer.

'I tell thee thee dars' na'!'

'I tell thee I dare.' And thereupon he slowly but resolutely set out
for the slip-house door and Mr. Machin.

Eli Machin was beyond doubt the most considerable employe on Clarke's
'bank' (manufactory). Even Henry Clarke approached him with a
subtly-indicated deference, and whenever Silas Emery, the immensely rich
and miserly sleeping partner in the firm, came up to visit the works,
these two old men chatted as old friends. In a modern earthenware
manufactory the engine-room is the source of all activity, for, owing to
the inventive genius of a famous and venerable son of the Five Towns,
steam now presides at nearly every stage in the long process of turning
earth into ware. It moves the pug-mill, the jollies, and the marvellous
batting machines, dries the unfired clay, heats the printers' stoves,
and warms the offices where the 'jacket-men' dwell. Coal is a tremendous
item in the cost of production, and a competent, economical engine-man
can be sure of good wages and a choice of berths; he is desired like a
good domestic servant. Eli Machin was the prince of engine-men. His
engine never went wrong, his coal bills were never extravagant, and
(supreme virtue!) he was never absent on Mondays. From his post in the
slip-house he watched over the whole works like a father, stern, gruff,
forbidding, but to be trusted absolutely. He was sixty years old, and
had been 'putting by' for nearly half a century. He lived in a tiny
villa-cottage with his bed-ridden, cheerful wife, and lent small sums on
mortgage of approved freeholds at 5 per cent.--no more and no less.
Secure behind this rampart of saved money, he was the equal of the King
on the throne. Not a magnate in all the Five Towns who would dare to be
condescending to Eli Machin. He had been a sidesman at the old church. A
trades-union had once asked him to become a working-man candidate for
the Bursley Town Council, but he had refused because he did not care for
the possibility of losing caste by being concerned in a strike. His
personal respectability was entirely unsullied, and he worshipped this
abstract quality as he worshipped God.

There was only one blot--but how foul!--on Eli Machin's career, and that
had been dropped by his daughter Miriam, when, defying his authority,
she marr