shut thin lips up and down and then began to discuss other matters. But
as they parted at Lime Street Station the observer of life said to
Arthur with presaging calm: 'You'll be i' th' Five Towns at the end of
the week. Come and have a cup o' tea with me and Hannah on Saturday
afternoon. The old spot, you know it, top of Church Street. I've
something to show you as 'll interest you.' There was a pause and an
interchange of glances. 'Right!' said Arthur Twemlow. 'Thank you! I'll
be there at a quarter after four or thereabouts.' 'It's like as if what
must be!' Meshach murmured to himself with almost sad resignation, in
the enigmatic idiom of the Five Towns. But he was highly pleased that
he, the first of all the townsfolk, should have seen Arthur Twemlow
after twenty-five years' absence.

When Hannah, in silk, met the most interesting and disconcerting
American stranger in the lobby, the sound and the smell of Bursley
sausage frizzling in the kitchen added a warm finish to her confused
welcome. She remembered him perfectly, 'Eh! Mr. Arthur,' she said, 'I
remember you that _well_....' And that was all she could say, except:
'Now take off your overcoat and do make yourself at home, Mr. Arthur.'

'I guess I know _you_,' said Twemlow, touched by the girlish shyness,
the primeval innocence, and the passionate hospitality of the little
grey-haired thing.

As he took off his glossy blue overcoat and hung it up he seemed to fill
the narrow lobby with his large frame and his quiet but penetrating
attractive American accent. He probably weighed fourteen stone, but the
elegance of his suit and his boots, the clean-shaven chin, the fineness
of the lines of the nose, and the alert eyes set back under the temples,
redeemed him from grossness. He looked under rather than over forty; his