It was a magnificent sealskin mantle, longer than sealskin mantles usually are. It was one of those articles the owner of which can say: "Nobody can have a better than this--I don't care who she is." It was worth in monetary value all the plain, shabby clothes on Mrs Machin's back, and all her very ordinary best clothes upstairs, and all the furniture in the entire house, and perhaps all Denry's dandiacal wardrobe too, except his fur coat. If the entire contents of the cottage, with the aforesaid exception, had been put up to auction, they would not have realised enough to pay for that sealskin mantle. Had it been anything but a sealskin mantle, and equally costly, Mrs Machin would have upbraided. But a sealskin mantle is not "showy." It "goes with" any and every dress and bonnet. And the most respectable, the most conservative, the most austere woman may find legitimate pleasure in wearing it. A sealskin mantle is the sole luxurious ostentation that a woman of Mrs Machin's temperament--and there are many such in the Five Towns and elsewhere--will conscientiously permit herself. "Try it on," said Denry. She rose weakly and tried it on. It fitted as well as a sealskin mantle can fit. "My word--it's warm!" she said. This was her sole comment. "Keep it on," said Denry. His mother's glance withered the suggestion. "Where are you going?" he asked, as she left the room. "To put it away," said she. "I must get some moth-powder to-morrow." He protested with inarticulate noises, removed his own furs, which he threw down on to the old worn-out sofa, and drew a Windsor chair up to the fire. After a while his mother returned, and sat down in her rocking-chair, and began to shiver again under the shawl and the antimacassar. The lamp on the table lighted up the left side of her face and the right side of his. "Look here, mother," said he, "you must have a doctor." "I shall have no doctor." "You've got influenza, and it's a very tricky business--influenza is; you never know where you are with it." "Ye can call it influenza if ye like," said Mrs Machin. "There was no influenza in my young days. We called a cold a cold." "Well," said Denry, "you aren't well, are you?" "I never said I was," she answered grimly. "No," said Denry, with the triumphant ring of one who is about to devastate an enemy. "And you never will be in this rotten old cottage." "This was reckoned a very good class of house when your father and I came into it. And it's always been kept in repair. It was good enough for your father, and it's good enough for me. I don't see myself flitting. But some folks have gotten so grand. As for health, old Reuben next door is ninety-one. How many people over ninety are there in those gimcrack houses up by the Park, I should like to know?" Denry could argue with any one save his mother. Always, when he was about to reduce her to impotence, she fell on him thus and rolled him in the dust. Still, he began again.