brown hair was beginning to recede from the forehead, but the heavy
moustache, which entirely hid his mouth and was austerely trimmed at the
sides, might have aroused the envy of a colonel of hussars.

'Come in, wut,'[1] cried Meshach impatiently from the hob, 'come in and
let's be pecking a bit,' and as Arthur and Hannah entered the parlour,
he added: 'She's gotten sausages for you. She would get 'em, though I
told her you'd take us as you found us. I told her that. But
women--well, you know what they are!'

[1] _Wut_ = wilt.

'Eh, Meshach, Meshach!' the old damsel protested sadly, and escaped into
the kitchen.

And when Meshach insisted that the guest should serve out the sausages,
and Hannah, passing his tea, said it was a shame to trouble him, Twemlow
slipped suddenly back into the old life and ways and ideas. This
existence, which he thought he had utterly forgotten, returned again and
triumphed for a time over all the experiences of his manhood; it alone
seemed real, honest, defensible. Sensations of his long and restless
career in New York flashed through his mind as he impaled Hannah's
sausages in the curious parlour--the hysteric industry of his
girl-typist, the continuous hot-water service in the bedroom of his
glittering apartment at the Concord House, youthful nights at Coster and
Bial's music-hall, an insanely extravagant dinner at Sherry's on his
thirtieth birthday, a difficulty once with an emissary of Pinkerton, the
incredible plague of flies in summer. And during all those racing years
of clangour and success in New York, the life of Bursley,
self-sufficient and self-contained, had preserved its monotonous and