Edwin raised his eyebrows at his wife.

"You needn't look at me!" said Hilda. "I'm going to have some."

Ingpen smacked his lips over the liqueur.

"It's a very bad thing late at night, of course. But I believe in giving your stomach something to think about. I never allow my digestive apparatus to boss me."

"Quite right, Mr. Ingpen."

They touched gla.s.ses, without a word, almost instinctively.

"Well," thought Edwin, "for a chap who thinks women ought to be behind the veil...!"

"Be a man, Clayhanger, and have some."

Edwin shook his head.

With a scarcely perceptible movement of her gla.s.s, Hilda greeted her husband, peeping out at him as it were for a fraction of a second in a glint of affection. He was quite happy. They were all seated close together, Edwin opposite the other two at the large table. The single gas-jet, by the very inadequacy with which it lighted the scene of disorder, produced an effect of informal homeliness and fellowship that warmed the heart. Each of the three realised with pleasure that a new and promising friendship was in the making. They talked at length about the Musical Evenings, and Edwin said that he should buy some music, and Hilda asked him to obtain a history of music that Ingpen described with some enthusiasm, and the date of the first evening was settled,--Sunday week. And after uncounted minutes Ingpen remarked that he presumed he had better go.

"I have to cycle home," he announced once more.

"To-night?" Hilda exclaimed.

"No. This morning."

"All the way to Axe?"

"Oh, no! I'm three miles this side of Axe. It's only six and a half miles."

"But all those hills!"

"Pooh! Excellent for the muscles of the calf."

"Do you live alone, Mr. Ingpen?"

"I have a sort of housekeeper."

"In a cottage?"

"In a cottage."

"But what do you _do_--all alone?"

"I cultivate myself."

And Hilda, in a changed tone, said:

"How wise you are!"

"Rather inconvenient, being out there, isn't it?" Edwin suggested.

"It may be inconvenient sometimes for my job. But I can't help that. I give the State what I consider fair value for the money it pays me, and not a grain more. I've got myself to think about. There are some things I won't do, and one of them is to live all the time in a vile hole like the Five Towns. I won't do it. I'd sooner be a blooming peasant on the land."

As he was a native he had the right to criticise the district without protest from other natives.

"You're quite right as to the vile hole," said Hilda with conviction.

"I don't know----" Edwin muttered. "I think old Bosley isn't so bad."

"Yes. But you're an old stick-in-the-mud, dearest," said Hilda. "Mr.

Ingpen has lived away from the district, and so have I. You haven't.

You're no judge. We know, don't we, Mr. Ingpen?"

When, Ingpen having at last acc.u.mulated sufficient resolution to move and get his cap, they went through the drawing-room to the garden, they found that rain was falling.

"Never mind!" said Ingpen, lifting his head sardonically in a mute indictment of the heavens. "I have my mack."

Edwin searched out the bicycle and brought it to the window, and Hilda stuck a hat on his head. Leisurely Ingpen clipped his trousers at the ankle, and unstrapped a mackintosh cape from the machine, and folded the strap. Leisurely he put on the cape, and gazed at the impenetrable heavens again.

"I can make you up a bed, Mr. Ingpen."

"No, thanks. Oh, no, thanks! The fact is, I rather like rain."

Leisurely he took a box of fusees from his pocket, and lighted his lamp, examining it as though it contained some hidden and perilous defect.

Then he pressed the tyres.

"The back tyre'll do with a little more air," he said thoughtfully. "I don't know if my pump will work."

It did work, but slowly. After which, gloves had to be a.s.sumed.

"I suppose I can get out this way. Oh! My music! Never mind, I'll leave it."

Then with a sudden access of ceremoniousness he bade adieu to Hilda; no detail of punctilio was omitted from the formality.

"Good-bye. Many thanks."

"Good-bye. Thank _you_!"

Edwin preceded the bicyclist and the bicycle round the side of the house to the front-gate at the corner of Hulton Street and Trafalgar Road.

In the solemn and chill nocturnal solitude of rain-swept Hulton Street, Ingpen straddled the bicycle, with his left foot on one raised pedal and the other on the pavement; and then held out a gloved hand to Edwin.

"Good-bye, old chap. See you soon."

Much good-will and appreciation and hope was implicit in that rather casual handshake.

He sheered off strongly down the dark slope of Hulton Street in the rain, using his ankles with skill in the pedal-stroke. The man's calves seemed to be enormously developed. The cape ballooned out behind his swiftness, and in a moment he had swerved round the flickering mournful gas-lamp at the bottom of the mean new street and was gone.