But the pellucid blueness of the gaze that met his was confusingly unstirred by any shade of suitable timidity or emotion. There was something in the lovely, sedate little creature, something so undisturbed and matter of fact, that it frightened him, because he suddenly felt like a fool whose folly had been found out. “That's downright silly,” remarked Little Ann, not allowing him to escape from her glance, which unhesitatingly summed up him and his situation. “And you know it is. You don't know anything about me, and you wouldn't like me if you did. And I shouldn't like you. We're too different. Please go away, and don't say anything more about it. I shouldn't have patience to talk it over.” “Father,” she said that night, “if ever I get married at all, there's only one person I'm going to marry. You know that.” And she would say no more. By the time they returned to England, the placing of the invention in divers countries had been arranged in a manner which gave assurance of a fortune for its owners on a foundation not likely to have established itself in more adverse circumstances. Mr. Hutchinson had really driven some admirable bargains, and had secured advantages which to his last hour he would believe could have been achieved only by Lancashire shrewdness and Lancashire ability to “see as far through a mile-stone as most chaps, an' a bit farther.” The way in which he had never allowed himself to be “done” caused him at times to chuckle himself almost purple with self-congratulation. “They got to know what they was dealing with, them chaps. They was sharp, but Joe was a bit sharper,” he would say. They found letters waiting for them when they reached London. “There's one fro' thy grandmother,” Hutchinson said, in dealing out the package. “She's written to thee pretty steady for an old un.” This was true. Letters from her had followed them from one place to another. This was a thick one in an envelop of good size. “Aren't tha going to read it?” he asked. “Not till you've had your dinner, Father. You've had a long day of it with that channel at the end. I want to see you comfortable with your pipe.” The hotel was a good one, and the dinner was good. Joseph Hutchinson enjoyed it with the appetite of a robust man who has had time to get over a not too pleasant crossing. When he had settled down into a stout easy-chair with the pipe, he drew a long and comfortable breath as he looked about the room. “Eh, Ann, lass,” he said, “thy mother 'd be fine an' set up if she could see aw this. Us having the best that's to be had, an' knowin' we can have it to the end of our lives, that's what it's come to, tha knows. No more third-class railway-carriages for you and me. No more `commercial' an' `temperance' hotels. Th' first cut's what we can have--th' upper cut. Eh, eh, but it's a good day for a man when he's begun to be appreciated as he should be.”