the most discussed personage in the county.  It was stated that such thrift clubs, under various names, existed in several large towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire.  This disclosure rehabilitated Denry completely in general esteem, for whatever obtains in Yorkshire and Lancashire must be right for Staffordshire; but it rather dashed Denry, who was obliged to admit to himself that after all he had not invented the Thrift Club.  Finally the hundreds of tradesmen who had bound themselves to allow a discount of twopence in the shilling to the club (sole source of the club’s dividends) had endeavoured to revolt.  Denry effectually cowed them by threatening to establish co-operative stores—­there was not a single co-operative store in the Five Towns.  They knew he would have the wild audacity to do it.

Thenceforward the progress of the Thrift Club had been unruffled.  Denry waxed amazingly in importance.  His mule died.  He dared not buy a proper horse and dogcart, because he dared not bring such an equipage to the front door of his mother’s four-and-sixpenny cottage.  So he had taken to cabs.  In all exterior magnificence and lavishness he equalled even the great Harold Etches, of whom he had once been afraid; and like Etches he became a famous habitue of Llandudno pier.  But whereas Etches lived with his wife in a superb house at Bleakridge, Denry lived with his mother in a ridiculous cottage in ridiculous Brougham Street.  He had a regiment of acquaintances and he accepted a lot of hospitality, but he could not return it at Brougham Street.  His greatness fizzled into nothing in Brougham Street.  It stopped short and sharp at the corner of St Luke’s Square, where he left his cabs.  He could do nothing with his mother.  If she was not still going out as a sempstress the reason was, not that she was not ready to go out, but that her old clients had ceased to send for her.  And could they be blamed for not employing at three shillings a day the mother of a young man who wallowed in thousands sterling?  Denry had essayed over and over again to instil reason into his mother, and he had invariably failed.  She was too independent, too profoundly rooted in her habits; and her character had more force than his.  Of course, he might have left her and set up a suitably gorgeous house of his own.

But he would not.

In fact, they were a remarkable pair.

On this eve of her birthday he had meant to cajole her into some step, to win her by an appeal, basing his argument on her indisposition.  But he was being beaten off once more.  The truth was that a cajoling, caressing tone could not be long employed towards Mrs Machin.  She was not persuasive herself, nor; favourable to persuasiveness in others.

“Well,” said she, “if you’re making two thousand a year, ye can spend it or save it as ye like, though ye’d better save it.  Ye never know what may happen in these days.  There was a man dropped half-a-crown down a grid opposite only the day before yesterday.”