He went in. The family had come home that afternoon. Sundry of his sisters greeted him with silent horror on their faces in the hall. In the breakfast-room, which gave off the drawing-room, was his mother in the attitude of an intent listener. She spoke no word. And Ellis listened, too. 'Yes,' a very powerful and raucous voice was saying in the drawing-room, 'I reckoned I'd call and tell ye myself, Mister Carter, what I thought on it. My gell, a motherless gell, but brought up respectable; sixth standard at Whalley Range Board School; and her aunt a strict God-fearing woman! And here your son comes along and gets hold of the girl while her aunt's at the special service for Wakes folks in Bethesda Chapel, and runs off with her in my dogcart with one of my hosses, and raises a scandal all o'er the Five Towns. God bless my soul, mister! I tell'n ye I hardly liked to open o' Monday afternoon, I was that ashamed! And I packed Ada off to Manchester. It seems to me that if the upper classes, as they call 'em--the immoral classes _I_ call 'em--'ud look after themselves a bit instead o' looking after other people so much, things might be a bit better, Mister Carter. I dare say you think it's nothing as your son should go about ruining the reputation of any decent, respectable girl as he happens to fancy, Mister Carter; but this is what I say. I say----' Mr. Carter was understood to assert, in his most pacific and pained public-meeting voice, that he regretted, infinitely regretted---- Mrs. Carter, weeping, ran out of the breakfast-room. And soon afterwards the traction-engines rumbled off, and the high, green dogcart followed them. Ellis sat spell-bound. He heard the parlourmaid go into the drawing-room and announce, 'Tea is ready, sir!' and then his father's dry cough. And then the parlourmaid came into the breakfast-room: 'Tea is ready, Mr. Ellis!' Oh, the meal! * * * * * A FEUD When Clive Timmis paused at the side-door of Ezra Brunt's great shop in Machin Street, and the door was opened to him by Ezra Brunt's daughter before he had had time to pull the bell, not only all Machin Street knew it within the hour, but also most persons of consequence left in Hanbridge on a Thursday afternoon--Thursday being early-closing day. For Hanbridge, though it counts sixty thousand inhabitants, and is the chief of the Five Towns--that vast, huddled congeries of boroughs devoted to the manufacture of earthenware--is a place where the art of attending to other people's business still flourishes in rustic perfection.