Alexis Triona followed her down the passage, and having washed himself with a bit of yellow soap and dried himself on the coarse towel hung on a stretch of string, went into the tidy kitchen, hung with cheap prints and faded photographs of departed Briggses, his coat over his arm, and conversed with his sister in his shirt sleeves while she fried the eggs and bacon for his meal. His readiness to fall into the household ways somewhat mollified her. Her mother had been full of pride in the great man John had become, and she had expected the airs and graces of the upstart. Living at Sunderland with her husband, a foreman riveter, and her children, and going filially to Newcastle only once a year, she had not met him on his previous visits. Now her mother’s illness had summoned her three or four days before, when the neighbour’s daughter who “did for” Mrs. Briggs, ordinarily a strong and active woman, found the sudden situation beyond her powers and responsibility. So, until the ailing lady discoursed to her of the paragon, she had scarcely given him a thought for the sixteen years they had been separated. Her memories of him as a child who alternated exasperating mischief with bone-idle fits of reading had not endeared him to her practical mind; and when the impish dreamer disappeared into the vast inane of foreign parts, and when she herself was driven by she knew not what idiot romanticalism into the grey worries of wifehood and motherhood, her consciousness recorded the memory of a brother John, but whether he was alive or dead or happy or miserable was a matter of illimitable unconcern. Now, however, he had come to life, very vivid, impressing her with a certain masterfulness in his manner which had nothing to do with the airs and graces she despised. Yet she still regarded him with suspicion; even when, seating himself at the roughly laid end of the kitchen table and devouring bacon and eggs with healthy appetite, he enthusiastically praised her cookery. “What I can’t understand is,” she said, standing at the other end of the table and watching him eat, “why the name of John Briggs isn’t good enough for you.” “It’s difficult to explain,” said he. “You see, I’ve written a book. Have you read it?” She regarded him scornfully. “Do you suppose, with a husband and seven children I’ve time to waste on books? I’ve seen it,” she admitted. “Mother has it bound in brown paper, by the side of her bed.” “You must read it,” replied Triona, somewhat relieved. “Then you’ll see why I’ve changed my name.” He laughed at her uncomprehending face. “I’ve done nothing criminal, you know, and I’m not hiding from justice.” “I suppose an outlandish name brings in more money,” she suggested practically. “That’s so,” said he. “Fools must be fools.” He acquiesced gladly, gauging the end of an embarrassing examination, and turned the conversation to her domestic affairs.