contempt for the inhabitants, whom he always pictured to himself as
fine, lazy people, caring nothing but for fashion and aristocracy, and
lounging away their days in Bond Street, and such places; ruining good
English, and ready in their turn to despise him as a provincial. The
hours that the men of business kept in the city scandalized him too,
accustomed as he was to the early dinners of Manchester folk and
the consequently far longer evenings. Still, he was pleased to go to
London, though he would not for the world have confessed it, even to
himself, and always spoke of the step to his friends as one demanded
of him by the interests of his employers, and sweetened to him by a
considerable increase of salary. This, indeed, was so liberal that he
might have been justified in taking a much larger house than the
one he did, had he not thought himself bound to set an example to
Londoners of how little a Manchester man of business cared for show.
Inside, however, he furnished it with an unusual degree of comfort,
and, in the winter-time, he insisted on keeping up as large fires as
the grates would allow, in every room where the temperature was in
the least chilly. Moreover, his northern sense of hospitality was such
that, if he were at home, he could hardly suffer a visitor to leave
the house without forcing meat and drink upon him. Every servant in
the house was well warmed, well fed, and kindly treated; for their
master scorned all petty saving in aught that conduced to comfort;
while he amused himself by following out all his accustomed habits and
individual ways, in defiance of what any of his new neighbours might
think.

His wife was a pretty, gentle woman, of suitable age and character. He
was forty-two, she thirty-five. He was loud and decided; she soft and
yielding. They had two children; or rather, I should say, she had two;
for the elder, a girl of eleven, was Mrs Openshaw's child by Frank