the Hawkins. M.P.'s live there. It is the link between the aristocratic
and antique aloofness of Oldcastle and the solid commercial prosperity
of the Five Towns. Ellis adorned the portico. Young (a bare twenty-two),
fair, handsome, smiling, graceful, well-built, perfectly groomed, he was
an admirable and a characteristic specimen of the race of dogs which,
with the modern growth of luxury and the Luxurious Spirit, has become so
marked a phenomenon in the social development of the once barbarous Five
Towns.

When old Jack Carter (reputed to be the best turner that Bursley ever
produced) started a little potbank near St. Peter's Church in 1861--he
was then forty, and had saved two hundred pounds--he little dreamt that
the supreme and final result after forty years would be the dog. But so
it was. Old Jack Carter had a son John Carter, who married at
twenty-five and lived at first on twenty-five shillings a week, and
enthusiastically continued the erection of the fortune which old Jack
had begun. At thirty-three, after old Jack's death, John became a Town
Councillor. At thirty-six he became Mayor and the father of Ellis, and
the recipient of a silver cradle. Ellis was his wife's maiden name. At
forty-two he built the finest earthenware manufactory in Bursley, down
by the canal-side at Shawport. At fifty-two he had been everything that
a man can be in the Five Towns--from County Councillor to President of
the Society for the Prosecution of Felons. Then Ellis left school and
came to the works to carry on the tradition, and his father suddenly
discovered him. The truth was that John Carter had been so laudably busy
with the affairs of his town and county that he had nearly forgotten his
family. Ellis, in the process of achieving doghood, soon taught his
father a thing or two. And John learnt. John could manage a public
meeting, but he could not manage Ellis. Besides, there was plenty of
money; and Ellis was so ingratiating, and had curly hair that somehow