the other is the south bowling-green; in the middle is a terra-cotta and
glass shelter; and at intervals, against the terra-cotta balustrade, are
arranged rustic seats from which the aged, the enamoured, and the
sedentary can enjoy the gold angel.

Between the southernmost seat and the south bowling-green, on that
Saturday afternoon, stood Mr. James Ollerenshaw. He was watching a man
who earned four-and-sixpence a day by gently toying from time to time
with a roller on the polished surface of the green. Mr. James
Ollerenshaw's age was sixty; but he looked as if he did not care. His
appearance was shabby; but he did not seem to mind. He carried his hands
in the peculiar horizontal pockets of his trousers, and stuck out his
figure, in a way to indicate that he gave permission to all to think of
him exactly what they pleased. Those pockets were characteristic of the
whole costume; their very name is unfamiliar to the twentieth century.
They divide the garment by a fissure whose sides are kept together by
many buttons, and a defection on the part of even a few buttons is apt
to be inconvenient. James Ollerenshaw was one of the last persons in
Bursley to defy fashion in the matter of pockets. His suit was of a
strange hot colour--like a brick which, having become very dirty, has
been imperfectly cleaned and then powdered with sand--made in a hard,
eternal, resistless cloth, after a pattern which has not survived the
apprenticeship of Five Towns' tailors in London. Scarcely anywhere save
on the person of James Ollerenshaw would you see nowadays that cloth,
that tint, those very short coat-tails, that curved opening of the
waistcoat, or those trouser-pockets. The paper turned-down collar, and
the black necktie (of which only one square inch was ever visible), and
the paper cuffs, which finished the tailor-made portion of Mr.
Ollerenshaw, still linger in sporadic profusion. His low, flat-topped
hat was faintly green, as though a delicate fungoid growth were just