demanded of him by the interests of his employers, and sweetened to him
by a considerable increase of salary. His salary indeed was so liberal
that he might have been justified in taking a much larger House than this
one, had he not thought himself bound to set an example to Londoners of
how little a Manchester man of business cared for show. Inside, however,
he furnished the House with an unusual degree of comfort, and, in the
winter time, he insisted on keeping up as large fires as the grates would
allow, in every room where the temperature was in the least chilly.
Moreover, his northern sense of hospitality was such, that, if he were at
home, he could hardly suffer a visitor to leave the house without forcing
meat and drink upon him. Every servant in the house was well warmed,
well fed, and kindly treated; for their master scorned all petty saving
in aught that conduced to comfort; while he amused himself by following
out all his accustomed habits and individual ways in defiance of what any
of his new neighbours might think.

His wife was a pretty, gentle woman, of suitable age and character. He
was forty-two, she thirty-five. He was loud and decided; she soft and
yielding. They had two children or rather, I should say, she had two;
for the elder, a girl of eleven, was Mrs. Openshaw's child by Frank
Wilson her first husband. The younger was a little boy, Edwin, who could
just prattle, and to whom his father delighted to speak in the broadest
and most unintelligible Lancashire dialect, in order to keep up what he
called the true Saxon accent.

Mrs. Openshaw's Christian-name was Alice, and her first husband had been
her own cousin. She was the orphan niece of a sea-captain in Liverpool:
a quiet, grave little creature, of great personal attraction when she was
fifteen or sixteen, with regular features and a blooming complexion. But
she was very shy, and believed herself to be very stupid and awkward; and