Nellie (his wife), his mother, the nurse, the cook, the maid--five of
them; and in his mind they had all plotted together--a conspiracy of
carelessness--to leave the inexcusable tool in his lobby for him to
stumble over. What was the use of accidentally procuring three hundred
and forty-one pounds?

Still no sign of Nellie, though he purposely made a noisy rattle with
his ebon walking-stick. Then the maid burst out of the kitchen with a
tray and the principal utensils for high tea thereon. She had a guilty
air. The household was evidently late. Two steps at a time he rushed
upstairs to the bathroom, so as to be waiting in the dining-room at
six precisely, in order, if possible, to shame the household and fill
it with remorse and unpleasantness. Yet ordinarily he was not a very
prompt man, nor did he delight in giving pain. On the contrary, he was
apt to be casual, blithe and agreeable.

The bathroom was his peculiar domain, which he was always modernizing,
and where his talent for the ingenious organization of comfort, and
his utter indifference to aesthetic beauty, had the fullest scope.
By universal consent admitted to be the finest bathroom in the Five
Towns, it typified the whole house. He was disappointed on this
occasion to see no untidy trace in it of the children's ablution;
some transgression of the supreme domestic law that the bathroom must
always be free and immaculate when father wanted it would have
suited his gathering humour. As he washed his hands and cleansed his
well-trimmed nails with a nail-brush that had cost five shillings and
sixpence, he glanced at himself in the mirror, which he was splashing.
A stoutish, broad-shouldered, fair, chubby man, with a short bright
beard and plenteous bright hair! His necktie pleased him; the elegance
of his turned-back wristbands pleased him; and he liked the rich down