idea that he was doing well and waxing financially from strength to strength!  But the idea was too vague, too much in the air.  And save by a suit of clothes, he never gave ocular proof that he had money to waste.  He could not.  It was impossible for him to compete with even the more modest of the bloods and the blades.  To keep a satisfactory straight crease down the middle of each leg of his trousers was all he could accomplish with the money regularly at his disposal.  The town was wafting for him to do something decisive in the matter of what it called “the stuff.”

Thus Ruth Earp was the first to introduce him to the higher intimate civilisations, the refinements lurking behind the foul walls of Bursley.

“Sugar?” she questioned, her head on one side, her arm uplifted, her sleeve drooping, and a bit of sugar caught like a white mouse between the claws of the tongs.

Nobody before had ever said “Sugar?” to him like that.  His mother never said “Sugar?” to him.  His mother was aware that he liked three pieces, but she would not give him more than two.  “Sugar?” in that slightly weak, imploring voice seemed to be charged with a significance at once tremendous and elusive.

“Yes, please.”

“Another?”

And the “Another?” was even more delicious.

He said to himself:  “I suppose this is what they call flirting.”

When a chronicler tells the exact truth, there is always a danger that he will not be believed.  Yet, in spite of the risk, it must be said plainly that at this point Denry actually thought of marriage.  An absurd and childish thought, preposterously rash; but it came into his mind, and—­what is more—­it stuck there!  He pictured marriage as a perpetual afternoon tea alone with an elegant woman, amid an environment of ribboned muslin.  And the picture appealed to him very strongly.  And Ruth appeared to him in a new light.  It was perhaps the change in her voice that did it.  She appeared to him at once as a creature very feminine and enchanting, and as a creature who could earn her own living in a manner that was both original and ladylike.  A woman such as Ruth would be a delight without being a drag.  And, truly, was she not a remarkable woman, as remarkable as he was a man?  Here she was living amid the refinements of luxury.  Not an expensive luxury (he had an excellent notion of the monetary value of things), but still luxury.  And the whole affair was so stylish.  His heart went out to the stylish.

The slices of bread-and-butter were rolled up.  There, now, was a pleasing device!  It cost nothing to roll up a slice of bread-and-butter —­her fingers had doubtless done the rolling—­and yet it gave quite a different taste to the food.

“What made you give that house to Mrs Hullins?” she asked him suddenly, with a candour that seemed to demand candour.

“Oh,” he said, “just a lark!  I thought I would.  It came to me all in a second, and I did.”