A still young man—his age was thirty—with a short, strong beard peeping out over the fur collar of a vast overcoat, emerged from a cab at the snowy corner of St. Luke’s Square and Brougham Street, and paid the cabman with a gesture that indicated both wealth and the habit of command. And the cabman, who had driven him over from Hanbridge through the winter night, responded accordingly. Few people take cabs in the Five Towns. There are few cabs to take. If you are going to a party you may order one in advance by telephone, reconciling yourself also in advance to the expense, but to hail a cab in the street without forethought and jump into it as carelessly as you would jump into a tram—this is by very few done. The young man with the beard did it frequently, which proved that he was fundamentally ducal. He was encumbered with a large and rather heavy parcel as he walked down Brougham Street, and moreover the footpath of Brougham Street was exceedingly dirty. And yet no one acquainted with the circumstances of his life would have asked why he had dismissed the cab before arriving at his destination, because every one knew. The reason was that this ducal person with the gestures of command dared not drive up to his mother’s door in a cab oftener than about once a month. He opened that door with a latchkey (a modern lock was almost the only innovation that he had succeeded in fixing on his mother), and stumbled with his unwieldy parcel into the exceedingly narrow lobby. "Is that you, Denry?" called a feeble voice from the parlour. "Yes," said he, and went into the parlour, hat, fur coat, parcel, and all. Mrs. Machin, in a shawl and an antimacassar over the shawl, sat close to the fire and leaning towards it. She looked cold and ill. Although the parlour was very tiny and the fire comparatively large, the structure of the grate made it impossible that the room should be warm, as all the heat went up the chimney. If Mrs. Machin had sat on the roof and put her hands over the top of the chimney she would have been much warmer than at the grate. "You aren’t in bed?" Denry queried. "Can’t ye see?" said his mother. And indeed to ask a woman who was obviously sitting up in a chair whether she was in bed did seem somewhat absurd. She added, less sarcastically: "I was expecting ye every minute. Where have ye had your tea?" "Oh!" he said lightly, "in Hanbridge." An untruth! He had not had his tea anywhere. But he had dined richly at the new Hôtel Métropole, Hanbridge. "What have ye got there?" asked his mother. "A present for you," said Denry. "It’s your birthday to-morrow." "I don’t know as I want reminding of that," murmured Mrs. Machin. But when he had undone the parcel and held up the contents before her she exclaimed: "Bless us!" The staggered tone was an admission that for once in a way he had impressed her.