The presumption of the ex-apprentice paled before his devotion and self-abnegation, but, self-conscious, after that first outburst of thanks on the Green, she had shrunk from meeting him in hall or staircase, and had always a reason ready why he should not be invited to their own tea-table when father or mother proposed it. Public events march on irrespective of private joys or sorrows, and no individual goes out into the world after three months’ seclusion to find things just as he left them. The first use Laurence Aspinall made of his eyes was to look at himself in a mirror; the second on his return to Manchester, to select a substitute for the clustering curls of which he had been despoiled. Closely shut in the carriage which Mr. Ashton lightly designated a box, he was driven down Market Street, to discover that the Spirit of Improvement, “fell bane of all that’s picturesque,” had touched the ancient, many-gabled, black-and-white houses with which his earliest recollections were associated, and they were crumbling into dusty ruins before the potent incantation “Space.” It was the beginning of a very necessary widening of the main thoroughfares of the growing commercial metropolis; but the blanks in the narrow street took Laurence by surprise. There was a newspaper the more for his restored sight to scan, albeit the _Manchester Guardian_, which Jeremiah Garnett and John Edward Taylor first gave to the world on the fifth of May, was scarcely likely to take his view of party politics, or of his share in the Peterloo massacre, which was still a disturbing element in the town. Just now the paper, which he found at the perruquier’s, was given over to the discussion of the approaching coronation of George IV., which likewise formed the theme of conversation, not only at the wig-maker’s, but whithersoever he turned when once more presentable. Somehow, though he found his way to the warehouse, and the cockpit, and the Assembly Billiard Club, and to Tib Street, where Bob the groom had a pretty daughter very much at the young man’s disposal, he did not present himself at his Mosley Street friend’s as soon as might have been expected, considering all things; and Augusta, in the most becoming of morning robes, watching with eager expectation for his coming, began to pant and chill with the sickness of hope deferred. He was by no means the only admirer of the lovely heiress, and was sufficiently desirous to complete his conquest before other competitors were fairly in the field; but he was in perplexity how to deal with Jabez Clegg, who stood in his way after another sort. He was grateful—after a fashion—for the preservation of his life; but _ungrateful_, inasmuch as Jabez was the preserver.