which are so lovely that they make you want to shed tears.  There is no hyperbole in this description of Sophia’s sensations, but rather an under-statement of them.  She was utterly obsessed by the unique qualities of Mr. Scales.  Nothing would have persuaded her that the peer of Mr. Scales existed among men, or could possibly exist.  And it was her intense and profound conviction of his complete pre-eminence that gave him, as he sat there in the rocking-chair in her mother’s parlour, that air of the unreal and the incredible.

“I stayed in the town on purpose to go to a New Year’s party at Mr. Lawton’s,” Mr. Scales was saying.

“Ah!  So you know Lawyer Lawton!” observed Mrs. Baines, impressed, for Lawyer Lawton did not consort with tradespeople.  He was jolly with them, and he did their legal business for them, but he was not of them.  His friends came from afar.

“My people are old acquaintances of his,” said Mr. Scales, sipping the milk which Maggie had brought.

“Now, Mr. Scales, you must taste my mince.  A happy month for every tart you eat, you know,” Mrs. Baines reminded him.

He bowed.  “And it was as I was coming away from there that I got into difficulties.”  He laughed.

Then he recounted the struggle, which had, however, been brief, as the assailants lacked pluck.  He had slipped and fallen on his elbow on the kerb, and his elbow might have been broken, had not the snow been so thick.  No, it did not hurt him now; doubtless a mere bruise.  It was fortunate that the miscreants had not got the better of him, for he had in his pocket-book a considerable sum of money in notes—­accounts paid!  He had often thought what an excellent thing it would be if commercials could travel with dogs, particularly in winter.  There was nothing like a dog.

“You are fond of dogs?” asked Mr. Povey, who had always had a secret but impracticable ambition to keep a dog.

“Yes,” said Mr. Scales, turning now to Mr. Povey.

“Keep one?” asked Mr. Povey, in a sporting tone.

“I have a fox-terrier bitch,” said Mr. Scales, “that took a first at Knutsford; but she’s getting old now.”

The sexual epithet fell queerly on the room.  Mr. Povey, being a man of the world, behaved as if nothing had happened; but Mrs. Baines’s curls protested against this unnecessary coarseness.  Constance pretended not to hear.  Sophia did not understandingly hear.  Mr. Scales had no suspicion that he was transgressing a convention by virtue of which dogs have no sex.  Further, he had no suspicion of the local fame of Mrs. Baines’s mince-tarts.  He had already eaten more mince-tarts than he could enjoy, before beginning upon hers, and Mrs. Baines missed the enthusiasm to which she was habituated from consumers of her pastry.

Mr. Povey, fascinated, proceeded in the direction of dogs, and it grew more and more evident that Mr. Scales, who went out to parties in evening dress, instead of going in respectable broad-cloth to watch-night services, who knew the great ones of the land, and who kept dogs of an inconvenient sex, was neither an ordinary commercial traveller nor the kind of man to which the Square was accustomed.  He came from a different world.