It was at this period—­only a few months previous to the opening of the present narrative—­that the district had first heard aught of the womenfolk of the Fleckrings.  An aunt—­Reuben, senior’s, sister, it appeared—­had died several years earlier, since when Rachel had alone kept house for her brother and her father.  According to rumour the three had lived in the simplicity of relative poverty, utterly unvisited except by clients.  No good smell of money had ever escaped from the small front room which was employed as an office into the domestic portion of the house.  It was alleged that Rachel had existed in perfect ignorance of all details of the business.  It was also alleged that when the sudden crisis arrived, her brother had told her that she would not be taken to America, and that, briefly, she must shift for herself in the world.  It was alleged further that he had given her forty-five pounds. (Why forty-five pounds and not fifty, none knew.) The whole affair had begun and finished—­and the house was sold up—­in four days.  Public opinion in the street and in Knype blew violently against the two Reubens, but as they were on the Atlantic it did not affect them.  Rachel, with scarcely an acquaintance in the world in which she was to shift for herself, found that she had a streetful of friends!  It transpired that everybody had always divined that she was a girl of admirable efficient qualities.  She behaved as though her brother and father had behaved in quite a usual and proper manner.  Assistance in the enterprise of shifting for herself she welcomed, but not sympathy.  The devotion of the Fleckring women began to form a legend.  People said that Rachel’s aunt had been another such creature as Rachel.

Hence the effect on Louis, who, through his aunt and his cousin, was acquainted with the main facts and surmises, of Rachel’s glowing reference to the vanished Reuben.

“Where did your brother practise?” he asked.

“In the cellar.”

“Of course it’s easier with a long barrel.”

“Is it?” she said incredulously.  “You should see my brother’s score-card the first time he shot at that new miniature rifle-range in Hanbridge!”

“Why?  Is it anything special?”

“Well, you should see it.  Five bulls, all cutting into each other.”

“I should have liked to see that.”

“I’ve got it upstairs in my trunk,” said she proudly.  “I dare say I’ll show you it some time.”

“I wish you would,” he urged.

Such loyalty moved him deeply.  Louis had had no sisters, and his youthful suburban experience of other people’s sisters had not fostered any belief that loyalty was an outstanding quality of sisters.  Like very numerous young men of the day, he had passed an unfavourable judgment upon young women.  He had found them greedy for diversion, amazingly ruthless in their determination to exact the utmost possible expensiveness of pleasure in return