They were most foolishly happy as they sat there on the bench, this man
whose dim eyes ought to have been waiting placidly for the ship of death
to appear above the horizon, and this young girl who imagined that she
knew all about life and the world. When I say that they were foolishly
happy, I of course mean that they were most wisely happy. Each of them,
being gifted with common sense, and with a certain imperviousness to
sentimentality which invariably accompanies common sense, they did not
mar the present by regretting the tragic stupidity of a long
estrangement; they did not mourn over wasted years that could not be
recalled. It must be admitted, in favour of the Five Towns, that when
its inhabitants spill milk they do not usually sit down on the pavement
and adulterate the milk with their tears. They pass on. Such passing on
is termed callous and cold-hearted in the rest of England, which loves
to sit down on pavements and weep into irretrievable milk.

Nor did Helen and her great-stepuncle mar the present by worrying about
the future; it never occurred to them to be disturbed by the possibility
that milk not already spilt might yet be spilt.

Helen had been momentarily saddened by private reflections upon what
James Ollerenshaw had missed in his career; and James had been saddened,
somewhat less, by reminiscences which had sprung out of Helen's laugh.
But their melancholies had rapidly evaporated in the warmth of the
unexpected encounter. They liked one another. She liked him because he
was old and dry; and because he had a short laugh, and a cynical and
even wicked gleam of the eye that pleased her; and because there was an
occasional tone in his voice that struck her as deliciously masculine,
ancient, and indulgent; and because he had spoken to her first; and