Meshach as, in the grand manner of a connoisseur, he lighted his cigar.
'And her was forty, day afore yesterday,' he added with caustic
emphasis.

'Meshach!' cried Hannah, 'for shame of yourself!' Then she turned to
Twemlow smiling and blushing a little. 'Oughtn't he? Eh, but Mrs. John's
a great favourite of my brother's. And I'm sure her girls are very good
and attentive. Not a day but one or another of them calls to see me, not
a day. Eh, if they missed a day I should think the world was coming to
an end. And I'm expecting Milly to-day. What's made the dear child so
late----'

'I will say this for John,' asserted Meshach, as though the little
housewife had not been speaking, 'I will say this for John,' he
repeated, settling himself by the hob. 'He knew how to pick up a d----d
fine woman.'

'Meshach!' Hannah expostulated again.

Something in the excellence of Meshach's cigars, in his way of calling a
woman fine, in the dry, aloof masculinity of his attitude towards
Hannah, gave Twemlow to reflect that in the fundamental deeps of
experience New York was perhaps not so far ahead of the old Five Towns
after all.

There was a fluttering in the lobby, and Millicent ran into the parlour,
hurriedly, negligently.

'I can't stay a minute, auntie,' the vivacious girl burst out in the
unmistakable accents of condescending pertness, and then she caught