listener; but, in addition to the practice of these manifold and
rare virtues, he found time, even at that tender age, to pay his
tailor's bill promptly and to fold his trousers in the same crease
every night--so that he always looked neat and dignified. Strange
to say, he made no friends. Perhaps he was just a thought too
perfect for a district like the Five Towns; a sin or so might have
endeared him to the entire neighbourhood. Perhaps his loneliness
was due to his imperfect sense of humour, or perhaps to the dull,
unsmiling heaviness of his somewhat flat features.

Sidney was quite a different story. Sidney, to use his mother's
phrase, was a little jockey. His years were then eight. Fair-
haired and blue-eyed, as most little jockeys are, he had a smile
and a scowl that were equally effective in tyrannizing over both
his mother and Horace, and he was beloved by everybody. Women
turned to look at him in the street. Unhappily, his health was not
good. He was afflicted by a slight deafness, which, however, the
doctor said he would grow out of; the doctor predicted for him a
lusty manhood. In the meantime, he caught every disease that
happened to be about, and nearly died of each one. His latest
acquisition had been scarlet fever. Now one afternoon, after he
had 'peeled' and his room had been disinfected, and he was
beginning to walk again, Horace came home and decided that Sidney
should be brought downstairs for tea as a treat, to celebrate his
convalescence, and that he, Horace, would carry him downstairs.
Mrs Carpole was delighted with the idea, and Sidney also, except
that Sidney did not want to be carried downstairs--he wanted to
walk down.

'I think it will be better for him to walk, Horace dear,' said Mrs