said: 'Well, you _have_ been going the pace! We always knew you were a
hot un, but, really----'



V

On the following Friday evening, when Ellis jumped off the car opposite
his home on the Hawkins, he saw in the road, halted, a train of vast and
queer-shaped waggons in charge of two traction-engines. They were
painted on all sides with the great name of Jenkins. They contained
Jenkins's roundabouts and shooting-saloons, on their way to rouse the
joy of life in other towns. And he perceived in front of the portico the
high, green dogcart and the lamp-post-destroying mare.

He went in. The family had come home that afternoon. Sundry of his
sisters greeted him with silent horror on their faces in the hall. In
the breakfast-room, which gave off the drawing-room, was his mother in
the attitude of an intent listener. She spoke no word.

And Ellis listened, too.

'Yes,' a very powerful and raucous voice was saying in the drawing-room,
'I reckoned I'd call and tell ye myself, Mister Carter, what I thought
on it. My gell, a motherless gell, but brought up respectable; sixth
standard at Whalley Range Board School; and her aunt a strict
God-fearing woman! And here your son comes along and gets hold of the
girl while her aunt's at the special service for Wakes folks in Bethesda
Chapel, and runs off with her in my dogcart with one of my hosses, and
raises a scandal all o'er the Five Towns. God bless my soul, mister! I