in his native town.  Certainly he did not so set down himself.  Certainly he was incapable of freakishness.  By the town he was respected.  His views on cottage property, the state of trade, and the finances of the borough were listened to with a respectful absence of comment.  He was one of the few who had made cottage property pay.  It was said he owned a mile of cottages in Bursley and Turnhill.  It was said that, after Ephraim Tellwright, he was the richest man in Bursley.  There was a slight resemblance of type between Ollerenshaw and Tellwright.  But Tellwright had buried two wives, whereas Ollerenshaw had never got within arm’s length of a woman.  The town much preferred Ollerenshaw.

After having duly surveyed the majestic activities of the ground-man on the bowling-green, and having glanced at his watch, Mr. Ollerenshaw sat down on the nearest bench; he was waiting for an opponent, the captain of the bowling-club.  It is exactly at the instant of his downsitting that the drama about to be unfolded properly begins.  Strolling along from the northern extremity of the terrace to the southern was a young woman.  This young woman, as could be judged from her free and independent carriage, was such a creature as, having once resolved to do a thing, is not to be deterred from doing it by the caprices of other people.  She had resolved—­a resolution of no importance whatever—­to seat herself on precisely the southernmost bench of the terrace.  There was not, indeed, any particular reason why she should have chosen the southernmost bench; but she had chosen it.  She had chosen it, afar off, while it was yet empty and Mr. Ollerenshaw was on his feet.  When Mr. Ollerenshaw dropped into a corner of it the girl’s first instinctive volition was to stop, earlier than she had intended, at one of the other seats.

Despite statements to the contrary, man is so little like a sheep that when he has a choice of benches in a park he will always select an empty one.  This rule is universal in England and Scotland, though elsewhere exceptions to it have been known to occur.  But the girl, being a girl, and being a girl who earned her own living, and being a girl who brought all conventions to the bar of her reason and forced them to stand trial there, said to herself, proudly and coldly:  “It would be absurd on my part to change my mind.  I meant to occupy that bench, and why should I not?  There is amply sufficient space for the man and me too.  He has taken one corner, and I will take the other.  These notions that girls have are silly.”  She meant the notion that she herself had had.