have heard his call, and that anyhow John would surely inquire for it
and might then be allowed to receive it with a few remarks upon the need
of a calm demeanour at fires; but John never did inquire for it.

When William Twemlow's will was proved a few weeks later, Meshach Myatt
made no comment whatever. From time to time he heard news of Arthur
Twemlow: that he had set up in New York as an earthenware and glassware
factor, that he was doing well, that he was doing extremely well, that
his buyer had come over to visit the more aristocratic manufactories at
Knype and Cauldon, that some one from Bursley had met Arthur at the
Leipzig Easter Fair and reported him stout, taciturn, and Americanised.
Then, one morning in Lord Street, Liverpool, fifteen years after the
death of old Twemlow and the misappropriation of the little book,
Meshach encountered Arthur Twemlow himself; Meshach was returning from
his autumn holiday in the Isle of Man, and Arthur had just landed from
the 'Servia.' The two men were mutually impressed by each other's skill
in nicely conducting an interview which ninety-nine people out of a
hundred would have botched; for they had last met as boy of seventeen
and man of forty. They lunched richly at the Adelphi, and gave news for
news. Arthur's buyer, it seemed, was dead, and after a day or two in
London Arthur was coming to the Five Towns to buy a little in person.
Meshach inquired about Alice in Australia, and was told that things were
in a specially bad way with the tea-blender. He said that you couldn't
cure a fool, and remarked casually upon the smallness of the amount left
by old Twemlow. Arthur, unaware that Meshach Myatt was raising up an
idea which for fifteen years had been buried but never forgotten in his
mind, answered with nonchalance that the amount certainly was rather
small. Arthur added that in his dying letter of forgiveness to Alice the
old man had stated that his income from the works during the last years
of his life had been less than two hundred per annum. Meshach worked his