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Economic Association’s John Bates Clark medal. In addition to his teaching
and academic research, Krugman writes extensively for nontechnical
audiences. He is a regular op-ed columnist for the New York Times. His best-
selling trade books include End This Depression Now!, The Return of
Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, a history of recent economic
troubles and their implications for economic policy, and The Conscience of a
Liberal, a study of the political economy of economic inequality and its
relationship with political polarization from the Gilded Age to the present. His
earlier books, Peddling Prosperity and The Age of Diminished Expectations,
have become modern classics.

ROBIN WELLS was a Lecturer and Researcher in Economics at Princeton

University. She received her BA from the University of Chicago and her PhD
from the University of California at Berkeley; she then did postdoctoral work
at MIT. She has taught at the University of Michigan, the University of
Southampton (United Kingdom), Stanford, and MIT.
Vision and Story of Essentials of
Economics

This is a book about economics as the study of what people do

and how they interact, a study very much informed by real-
world experience.

Dear Students and Instructors,

These words, this spirit, have served as a guiding principle for us in every edition.
While we were driven to write this book by many small ideas about particular
aspects of economics, we also had one big idea: an economics textbook should be
built around narratives, many of them pulled from real life, and it should never lose
sight of the fact that economics is, in the end, a set of stories about what people do.

Many of the stories economists tell take the form of models—for whatever else they
are, economic models are stories about how the world works. But we believe that
student understanding of and appreciation for models are greatly enhanced if they
are presented, as much as possible, in the context of stories about the real world that
both illustrate economic concepts and touch on the concerns we all face living in a
world shaped by economic forces.

You’ll find a rich array of stories in every chapter, in the chapter openers,
Economics in Actions, For Inquiring Minds, Global Comparisons, and the end-of-
part Business Cases. As always, we include many new stories and update others. We
also integrate an international perspective throughout, and most visibly, in our
Global Comparison feature. An overview of the narrative-based features in the text
is on p. viii.

We also include pedagogical features that reinforce learning. For example, each
major section ends with three related elements devised with the student in mind: (1)
the Economics in Action: a real-world application to help students achieve a fuller
understanding of concepts they just read about; (2) a Quick Review of key ideas in
list form; and (3) Check Your Understanding self-test questions with answers at back
of book. Our thought-provoking end-of-chapter problems are another strong
feature. And we are pleased to introduce the new Work It Out feature: one end-of-
chapter problem in each chapter that students solve with the help of an interactive
tutorial. An overview of the text’s tools for learning are on p. ix.

Students also benefit from the impressive set of online resources in that
are linked to specific chapter content. These include adaptive quizzing, tutorials,
interactive activities, and much more. All have been devised with the goal of
supporting instructor teaching and student learning in the one-semester introductory
course.

We hope that your experience with this text is a good one. Thank you for
introducing Essentials of Economics into your classroom.
 Engaging Students in the Study of
Economics

We are committed to the belief that students learn best from a textbook built
around narratives, steeped in real life and current events, with a strong
emphasis on global matters, and accompanied by proven technology that
supports student success.

Narrative Approach
This is a book built around narratives and stories, many pulled from real life.
In every chapter, stories are used to teach core concepts and motivate learning.
We believe that the best way to introduce concepts and reinforce them is
through memorable, real-world stories; students simply relate more easily to
them.

Global Focus

We have thoroughly integrated an international perspective into the text, in the

many applications, cases, and stories, and, of course, in the data-based Global
Comparison feature. This book is unrivaled in the attention paid to global
matters.

Technology That Builds Success

Developed alongside chapters and designed for seamless integration with the
book, for Essentials of Economics, Fourth Edition, provides students
access to an extensive collection of proven learning tools: adaptive quizzing,
tutorials, videos, activities, and a comprehensive review of math and graphing.
The goals for these resources are the same as the text’s: student engagement,
mastery of the material, and success in the course.
To find activities that correspond to the text, look for this icon:
What’s New in the Fourth Edition?
An important and timely new chapter on poverty and inequality New
Chapter 11 looks at the problem of poverty, the issue of income
inequality, and the U.S. welfare state and its philosophical foundations.
Health care economics is also covered, along with a detailed examination
of the Affordable Care Act.

New coverage of price discrimination and game theory, and a newly

separate Chapter 8 on monopoly In response to feedback from users,
we’ve carved out a separate chapter on monopoly and added coverage of
price discrimination to it. We also added a full section on game theory to
Chapter 9, on oligopoly and monopolistic competition. Our hope is that
these additions will resonate with students and make teaching these topics
more meaningful and fun.

Many new and updated stories, applications, and cases keep the text
fresh and engaging. The new stories cover a broad range of topics,
many reflecting current events—for example, sustainability, the impact
of technology, the economic situation in Europe, and today’s policy
debates. A listing of new examples appears on p. xiii.

Expanded and updated offerings in These include a new math

and graphing review, an array of new activities designed to motivate
learning and encourage success in the course, and enhanced integration
between and in-text content.
Engaging Students with a Narrative
Approach

To engage students, every chapter begins with a compelling story.

So students can immediately see economic concepts applied in the real world, Economics in Action
applications appear throughout chapters.
To provide students with an international perspective, the Global Comparison feature uses data and graphs
to illustrate why countries reach different economic outcomes.

So students can see key economic principles applied to real-life business situations, each major part
concludes with Business Cases.
Engaging Students with Effective
Tools for Learning
To reinforce learning, sections within chapters conclude with three tools for learning: (1) an application of
key concepts in the Economics in Action; (2) a quick review of key concepts; and (3) a comprehension
check with Check Your Understanding Questions (solutions are at back of book).

End-of-chapter worked-out problems, called Solved Problem, and new interactive activities on
, called Work It Out, guide students, step by step, through solving problems.
Pitfalls teach students to identify and avoid common misconceptions about economic concepts.
 Engaging Students with Technology

This edition is accompanied by technology that, like the textbook, has been
developed to spark student engagement and improve outcomes while offering
instructors flexible, high-quality, research-based tools for teaching this course.

LAUNCHPADWORKS.COM
Built from the ground up alongside Essentials of Economics, features the most
author-driven and text-specific content of any integrated homework system available. In this
edition you will find exciting changes to , including a collection of new activities
designed to augment in-chapter content and features to support student learning.

for Essentials of Economics Includes

The Complete Essentials of Economics e-Book

Pre-built units offer instructors and students ready-made

units for study with LearningCurve quizzes, e-Book pages,
tutorials, and graded homework for every chapter. Units are
flexible and easy to adapt or expand to suit individual
preferences.
 Adaptive Quizzing
Embraced by students and instructors alike, this incredibly popular and effective adaptive quizzing engine
offers individualized question sets and feedback tailored to each student based on correct and incorrect
responses. Questions are hyperlinked to relevant e-Book sections, encouraging students to read and use
the resources at hand to enrich their understanding.
NEW! Math and Graphing Review
This is a critically important new resource created by a team of instructors for students who
would benefit from a review of basic math and graphing—skills needed to do well in an introductory
economics course. It is organized as a series of activities, each with a pre-test question, an animation with
patient and clear explanations, and five concluding questions to test comprehension.

NEW! Student-Centered Activities

We have added three new types of activities to that are designed to help students
practice and master economic concepts.
NEW! Work It Out
These skill-building activities are tutorials that walk students through each step of solving an end-of-
chapter problem using choice-specific feedback and video explanations. They are an extension of the end-
of-chapter Solved Problems in the textbook, and they have allowed us to double the number of worked-
out problems in this edition.

NEW! Economics in Action Activities

Like the in-text feature of the same name, these activities engage students in learning through real-world
applications of key economic concepts. In , the feature is enhanced with assessment and links
to outside sources with related data. They also help students apply the concepts they’ve learned and
become more comfortable working with data.
NEW! Video Activities
A curated collection of video clips from PBS NewsHour are linked to specific chapters and accompanied
by multiple-choice assessment questions.
Provides Instructors with These
Resources

FOR ASSESSMENT
Test Bank Fully revised for the Fourth Edition, the Test Bank contains
multiple-choice and short-answer questions to help instructors assess students’
comprehension, interpretation, and ability to synthesize.
Graphing Questions Another question bank for instructors building
assignments and tests. These are electronically gradable graphing questions
that use our own graphing engine. Students are asked to draw graphs in
response to a question; their graphs are automatically graded by the software.
End-of-Chapter Problems The in-text end-of-chapter problems have
been converted to a multiple-choice format accompanied by answer-specific
feedback.
Graded Homework Assignments Each unit concludes with a
pre-built assignment, providing instructors with a curated set of multiple-
choice and graphing questions that are easily assigned for graded assessment.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
A Gradebook This useful resource offers clear feedback to students and
instructors on individual assignments and on performance in the course.
LMS integration Included so that is easily integrated into a
school’s learning management system and that an instructor ’s Gradebook and
roster are always in sync.
Instructor’s Resource Manual Offers instructors teaching materials
and tips to enhance the classroom experience, along with chapter objectives,
outlines, and other ideas.
Solutions Manual Prepared by the authors of the text, this manual offers
detailed solutions to all of the text’s end-of-chapter problems and the Business
Case questions.
Interactive Presentation Slides These brief, interactive, and visually
interesting slides are designed to hold students’ attention in class. The slides
include graphics and animations that demonstrate key concepts, real-world
examples, hyperlinks to relevant outside sources (including videos), and many
opportunities for active learning.

Also available for instructors and students, to be

used with any text or homework system:

FlipItEcon.com
FlipIt gets students actively involved in learning economics in a fresh way. This resource was developed
by two pioneers in active-learning methods—Eric Chiang, Florida Atlantic University, and José Vazquez,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Students watch Pre-Lectures and complete Bridge Question
assessments before class—helping them prepare so they can be fully engaged in class, and giving
instructors data about student comprehension that can inform their lecture preparation.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
suit the rival round. In the cases where she had imagined herself a
friend rather than an employee, it was heart-breaking.
Hence this new and rankling doubt of her species, waxing daily
as her business waned. Folk seemed to follow one another like
sheep, and whenever now on a bit of miry road she came upon the
serried footmarks of a flock, she shuddered with a sense of the
ignoble pettiness of the pattern: no massive individual stamp like
Methusalem’s, not even a characteristic dent like Nip’s, but an
ignominious churning of mud by a multiplication of innumerable little
identities. Pigs, too, supplied her with bitter comparisons when, with
her cart void of passengers and almost empty of parcels, she passed
at some cross-road the Flynt Flyer, stiflingly chock-full of both. For
she had often noted in the feeding of swine that however abundant
the food at its snout, master pig will always rush to the thickest
jostling-point.
Such was the crowd, such was humanity, thought our little cynic;
who was, however, no mere soured philosopher, but a harassed
housekeeper, with a couple of aged dependents, whose rashers or
oats were becoming seriously endangered. Methusalem had always
lived from hoof to mouth, and as for her grandfather, had he not
spent all his savings on her Angel-Mother’s debts? There were still
potatoes in the store, and half a flitch in the larder, and beer in the
barrel, and vegetables in the ground, and milk in the goats’ udders,
but the reserves of provender, as of cash, were small, and
Methusalem, whose appetite age could not abate, now began to
loom as a deficit rather than an asset. Nip was the first to notice—
and with pained astonishment—the parsimony of the new regime.
Why keep a mistress if one is to be practically thrown back on one’s
own resources?

II
In these circumstances it scarcely seemed on a par with the
ethics of the Spelling-Book, or of a piece with Jinny’s character, that
she should go to Miss Gentry and order a new Sunday dress of pink
sprigged muslin of the latest design—a gown that but for its not
hooking up at the back was absolutely ladylike. Still less that she
should drive in it on Tuesdays and Fridays. Whether it was in
emulation of her rival, on the theory that fashionableness was a
factor of his success, whether it was to brighten up her spirits, or to
exhibit a defiant prosperity, Jinny did not reveal, even to herself. But
that it was worn at Will rather than on herself, may be deduced from
the fact that the commission to the “French dressmaker” followed
hard upon her first encounter with the Flynt Flyer at the cross-roads.
It was on this occasion—as at many subsequent meetings on
Tuesdays or Fridays—that Nip was torn almost literally in two by his
desire to be in both vehicles at once. That they should wish to pass
each other without a halt or even a hail was amazing to the poor
animal, and if his distraction usually ended in a leap on to the coach,
where Will was never without a beguiling biscuit, he was always
careful to rejoin the cart before the interval had become too
spacious. Though a Nip-o’-both-sides, he was disloyal to neither:
indeed, if ever creature did his best to bring two foolish mortals
together, that creature was Nip. But they no longer even saluted
each other. At first, indeed, the gentleman driver had doffed his hat
gallantly, but Jinny’s face had remained a stone, though that stone
was a ruby. Will, therefore, when he had to meet or pass her, flew
by at a rate which by its air of insolent superiority only increased her
resentment. Later, he had begun to slow down when he espied her
lumbering along his route, and to play the “Buy a Broom” polka on
his horn with malicious accuracy.
By way of retort Jinny once tied a label to Nip’s collar, marked “In
charge of the guard.” It was meant to taunt Will with lacking the
dignity of a true driver, who never blew a horn. But the somewhat
periphrastic sarcasm seemed to miss fire, for Will took the label
literally, and when Nip had executed his usual leap on to the coach,
he kept him prisoner for several days. The faithful animal, though
fed as never before, was as unhappy, tied on the roof, as Jinny was,
and when her cart at last passed, and her horn blew imperiously for
him, he made such a supercanine effort that his cord snapped, and
in an instant he was snuggling hysterically in the legitimate lap;
regardless of that flowery summery fabric. His label, she found, now
bore the words, “Pay Up The Gloves.”
Alas, paying up—whether for wagers or fabrics—was out of
Jinny’s power. That very morning Miss Gentry had handed her the
bill, delicately wrapped in a tract. Such a situation was quite new to
her, though not unprovided against in the Spelling-Book:

Weigh ev’ry small Expence and nothing waste,

Farthings, if sav’d, amount to Pounds in Haste.

This had been a large expense, yet she had not weighed it. It was
her debts and not her savings that had in such haste amounted to
pounds. Woe to the pride that had seduced her:

What the weak head with strongest bias rules

Is pride, the never-failing Vice of Fools.

She did not need her book’s reminder of her head’s weakness—
only too dismally she recognized that strange slipperiness of memory
which made it more difficult to execute her commissions in
proportion as their number dwindled. Was not the little notebook, to
which she must now have recourse, the abiding symbol of this
paradoxical humiliation?
She was not psychologist enough to understand that it was the
very perfection of her memory which was now tripping her up. So
many of her clients had for so long demanded the same things so
seasonably that she was automatically compelled to carry out
commissions that had now lapsed. She was like an actress who
knows her part even backwards, but is broken up and confused
when cuts are made; finding the too familiar words not to be ousted.
Jinny would mechanically purchase items for clients who had
forsaken her, and then—so scatterbrained was she become—leave
them at other customers’ houses! And on the other hand, she was
capable of forgetting the orders of the few faithful. It was thus that
under the combined strain of Miss Gentry’s bill, the sultry August
weather, the sight of the packed coach and its jaunty driver, the
frantic return of Nip with his mocking message, Jinny, whom
necessity had compelled to keep Farmer Gale as a customer, clean
forgot his urgent need of a wedding-cake. It was not that she had
forgotten to order it or even to fetch it from the leading
confectioner’s. The sudden union of Farmer Gale with the wealthy
land-surveyor’s widow, whose piano-playing had excited the far-off
admiration of Elijah Skindle, was too sensational an event, especially
to herself, to permit of complete oblivion. It was only that she forgot
to deliver the cake at Beacon Chimneys. She was actually within
sight of the stag-headed poplars that marked the horizon of home,
when, turning her head as Nip suddenly leapt for a rabbit, she saw
the great elegant carton in the cart. And the wedding was on the
morrow. Conscience-stricken, and morbidly feeling as though the
marriage would scarcely be legal without this colossal confection,
she resolved, worn out as she was with the heat, to drive back to
the house. But she had reckoned without Methusalem. To turn back
within the very smell of his stable was unprecedented: it violated
every equine code. Like Nip, he now became aware of the instability
of things—of a new order. But, more obstinate, he refused to
recognize it. Nothing short of the whip—which would have moved
him, not out of pain but out of astonishment—could have sufficed to
turn him, and how could a mistress who knew him in the right and
herself in the wrong, resort to that, especially after such a sultry
day? So after every effort to coax him or to lead him by the bridle
had failed and almost twenty minutes had been wasted, she decided
—in view of her grandfather’s supper—to make a special journey the
first thing in the morning.
As she gave Methusalem his glad head, she remembered that it
was just before the turning to the hymeneal homestead that she had
met that scandalously successful coach.

III
 Before Jinny reached home that evening, a complainant had
already called at Blackwater Hall to unload his grievance. Such
visitors were, alas, no longer a novelty to Daniel Quarles, who had
one day begun to find himself no merely nominal representative of
the business, but a principal charged with derelictions. His virulent
rebuttals of the reproaches did but increase the defections. The
flouted customers made no allowances for the ferocities of senility,
and, when told to go to hell, simply went to the Flynt Flyer—a much
pleasanter alternative. Indeed, one suspects they welcomed the
insult as justifying gravitation to the new star. The indelicacy,
however, of divulging its existence to the nonagenarian was reserved
for Mr. Elijah Skindle.
That rising practitioner’s patronage was not the least of Jinny’s
humiliations. Even after his proposal of marriage, she had not been
able to refuse to carry dogs to and from his establishment when so
commanded by her clients, though she had drawn the line at orders
originating from himself. Now, however, in justice to her grandfather,
she could not but accept his commissions, even though she was
aware they were largely artificial, mere canals for communication
and courtship. Why, for example, could not Mr. Skindle, whose gig
was often at gardens buzzing with beehives, not purchase his own
honey? Why must she procure him an article linkable with “moons”
and permitting fatuous references to “sweetness”? His protestations
of lack of time were too brazen even for his own mouth: he
stuttered and blushed like a schoolboy. It will be seen that Elijah’s
deeper self had not accepted his “lucky” escape from her. Hope
springs eternal, especially when the desirable one’s pride is bent, if
not broken, by adversity. That proud stomach which had rejected his
proffered luxuries with disdain now bade fair to be empty. While he,
moreover, touched nothing he did not profit by, and through a lucky
rise in animal sickness was fast overtaking the respectable Jorrow.
With an audacity almost Napoleonic he had conceived the idea of
at once blazoning and curing his baldness, purchasing a hair-restorer
through Jinny herself, so that she might be an accessory to the
improvement at which he was—obviously for her sake—slaving. And
there did actually begin to sprout on his cranium microscopic dots,
like pepper sprinkled over an egg-shell. Elijah lost no opportunity
now of lifting his cap at the sight of her, though he had not yet
acquired the habit of removing it indoors.
“Whoa!” Elijah drew up his trap in the grassy lane before
Blackwater Hall and jumped down. The afterglow of sunset was in
the sky, but the Common was still torpid with the breezeless heat of
the day. He was in his best flannel suit and smartest cap, though the
same old pipe stuck in his blackened teeth. Removing it, he rapped
at the door with it, knocking out the ashes with the same taps. As
nothing happened, he tugged from his pocket a paper-wrapped pot
and thudded at the door with that. He had been simulating rage, for
he had come to denounce a mistake, though enchanted to have the
opportunity of calling on Jinny. But now for fear she was not yet
back—and vexed with himself for not choosing one of her domestic
days—he began to get really ruffled. He lifted the latch
unceremoniously, but the door seemed bolted. Re-pocketing the pot
with an unsmothered oath, he moved towards the living-room wall
and peeped through the wide-flung little casement. Pah! Only the
Gaffer snoring in his favourite posture, head on the family Bible. The
shabbiness of the ancient earth-coloured smock-frock, like the
meanness of the furniture, added to Elijah’s disgust.
“Fancy her slaving in this heat,” he mused, “when she might be
snoozing on my horsehair sofa!” He shouted angrily, “Wake up, you
old codger.”
The nonagenarian obeyed with a start. “What’s amiss, my little
mavis?” he yawned.
“I ain’t a mavis,” Elijah informed him irately, “I’m a veterinary
surgeon.”
Daniel Quarles sprang to his feet. “Marciful powers! Anything
wrong with Methusalem?”
“No, no—” Elijah assured him through the little window, “I’ve
come about Jinny.”
 The old man tottered and caught at his chair. “An accident to
Jinny?”
“Stuff and nonsense! She’ll be home any minute. Can I come in
and wait for her?”
Daniel growled and grumbled. “Don’t you see Oi’m busy readin’
the Scriptures?”
“I won’t interfere with that.” He moved back to the door and
rattled the latch masterfully. He suddenly saw the possibility of
pushing his suit with the grandfather. “Why do you lock yourself in?”
he demanded, as the bolts creaked back.
“Don’t you see they’ve took the Dutch clock?” said the Gaffer
pitifully. “She desarts me all day long, and Oi can’t have my eyes
everywheres.”
Elijah glanced up at the clock in the ante-room, ticking as
imperturbably as ever.
“Why, it’s up there!” he said, puzzled.
“Do ye don’t try to befool me. That’s the same face, but they’ve
took out the works and put in rubbidge. But it ain’t works we’re
justified by,” he added musingly.
Elijah, picking his way among the old cypress chests, followed
him into the living-room, sat down unasked on the settle, and
mechanically pulled out his pipe.
“Git out o’ my house!” roared Daniel.
Elijah’s pipe fell on the rush mat.
“Boldero hisself,” explained the ancient, “never durst smoke in my
nostrils. And who be you?”
Who was Boldero, Elijah thought a more sensible question. But
he picked up his pipe with an apology. “All right, uncle, no harm
done.” He wiped his forehead. “Warm, ain’t it?”
“Then why do ye want hell-smoke?”
“I shouldn’t quite call this hell-smoke,” Elijah deprecated.
 “There’s no smoke without hell-fire,” Daniel explained. “Farmer
Thoroughgood, he smoked just such a pipe as yourn.”
“And he was thorough good, you see,” said Elijah with an air of
victorious repartee.
“Thorough bad,” chuckled the Gaffer with a still greater air of wit.
“Starved his missus to death. The neighbours as come, to see the
corpse found her on a bed made out of a common sheep-hurdle,
stood on bricks.” He tapped the Bible with a dirty thumb. “Do ye
don’t yoke a hoss and ass together, says the Book. But that evil-doer
used to plough a field with a cow and a donkey, and when it
ploughed too hard, he’d harness an old sow in front of the donkey—
there’s currant-trees there now what pays better, not needin’ no
ploughin’.”
“Quite like the old song,” observed Elijah, still feeling superior
and witty. “There was a cow went out to plough.”
“Chrissimus Day, Chrissimus Day,” hummed the old man. Set
agoing, he quavered on:

“There was a pig went out to dig

On Chrissimus Day in the marning!

“Set ye down,” he broke off genially, though Elijah was already

ensconced, leg over knee. “Jinny’ll be home in a jiffy.”
“I wonder she’s so long,” Elijah began tentatively, “when she’s
got so little to do.”
“Ay,” assented the ancient, souring again. “ ’Tis me that’s got the
whole work o’ the place. But gals likes to gad about in the summer,
what becomes o’ the old folks never troubles the young ’uns
nowadays.”
“They might just as well be married,” ventured Elijah boldly.
“Ay, their husbands ’ud make ’em work,” said the Gaffer, his eye
gleaming maliciously. “But Oi don’t howd with starvin’ ’em, like
Farmer Thoroughgood did his missus. When they come to see her
corpse they found her on a bed made out of a common sheep-
hurdle. Ay, and he used to plough his fields with a——”
Elijah, groaning inwardly, composed himself to hear the story
again. Fortunately there was a fresh development at the finish. “One
day ’twas a team o’ bullocks and a blind hoss he started droivin’.
Powerful warrum it war—wuss than to-day—and the flies sow
worritin’ that the bullocks set their tails up and bolted. The poor
blind hoss couldn’t see where to goo and fell down. The oxen
couldn’t drag him, and got tangled up in the traces.” He roared with
laughter at the picture, and Elijah grinned too.
“Those flies do worrit,” he agreed, flicking at his forehead. “But
about that Jinny of yours——” he added.
“She’ll onny have them harmless fly-papers, you see,” said
Daniel, pointing to a coloured patch on the ceiling, blackened by a
happy multitude. “Ef ye can’t wait for her,” he added amiably, “Oi’ll
give her your message. A wet you said?”
“A veterinary surgeon, Mr. Elijah Skindle,” said Elijah grandly.
“Skindle!” The old man groped agitatedly in his memory. “That’s
a name Oi know.”
“Known all over the Hundred,” said Elijah complacently. “Ay, and
they’re hearing of my success at Colchester, too, where I come
from.”
“Cowchester!” The old man sprang up. “That’s it—the man as
married Annie! But that ain’t you—he had more hair to him.”
“Perhaps it was my father,” said Elijah, flushing.
“Nay, nay. Annie couldn’t have a son your soize,” the Gaffer
pondered.
“My mother’s name is Annie,” said Elijah.
A strange fire crept into the old patriarch’s eyes. “A big-boned
mawther of a girl, tall as the rod her father lit the lamps with, long
raven hair and eyes as black as sloes, and a wunnerful fine buzzom,”
he said with slow voluptuousness. “Your mother ain’t like that?”
“No,” admitted Elijah.
 Daniel Quarles heaved a sigh. “Oi thought not, or you’d be more
of a beauty.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” retorted Elijah. “For I’ve heard that my
grandfather did use to light the lamps in Chipstone, and it’s a great
shame the way my brothers and sisters all dump her on me to keep.”
The old man seized him suddenly by the coat-lapels. “She’s back
in Chipstone?”
“Been back over two years—ever since father died.”
“He’s dead?” Elijah felt the hands trembling against his breast.
“Of course—and I’ve got her to keep, though I’m the youngest,”
he grumbled.
“That’s the same luck as Oi had,” said the Gaffer, “with this bit of
property, though Sidrach, he’s the first-born.” He dropped pensively
back into his chair. “But Oi count Annie’s better off where she is,
bein’ as Oi’ve got Jinny to keep and food gittin’ dearer every day, she
says, something cruel. And happen Sidrach’ll come back too when
he’s old, not havin’ landed property like me, ne yet no relations in
Babylon. Never been sech a year since he went away—the Brad was
all froze over.”
Elijah imprudently recollected—to the old man’s annoyance—that
it had frozen equally in Queen Victoria’s first winter, and he brought
up “Murphy’s coldest day,” the proverbial lucky hit of an almanack-
maker. Fortunately the Gaffer recalled an ancient jest of Bundock’s:
“Mother Gander’s gin-bottle’s froze over,” and relaxed in genial
hysterics. “Ay, she’s conwerted now,” he said, wiping his rheumy
eyes. “But what an adulteress in them days! Ye couldn’t get drunk at
‘The Black Sheep’ ef ye tried—beer without hops and wine without
gripes.”
Mechanically drawing out his pipe and popping it back in alarm,
Elijah reverted to Jinny. Daniel now blamed Methusalem for her
lateness. Horses, too, were lazy and ungrateful, same as
granddaughters.
“Why don’t you get rid of him?” said Elijah, with a sudden
inspiration. That would cut her comb, he thought. Jinny docked of
Methusalem would be ripe for the marriage-altar. “He’s long past his
work.”
But Daniel Quarles shook his head. “Jinny wouldn’t like me to
part with that. Besides, who’d buy him?”
“I would,” said Elijah, with a feeling of “All for love, or the world
well lost.”
“You? Od rabbet, what for?”
“I’d give you a fiver!” parried the knacker in his reckless passion.
“Though most people let me have ’em for the trouble of killing ’em,”
he added incautiously.
The old man sprang up again. “Git out o’ my house! And don’t ye
dare cross my doorstep agen!”
Elijah cowered back in his seat. “But I’ve come on business,” he
protested.
“Oi bain’t a-gooin’ to sell Methusalem.”
“That’s not what I came for,” Elijah urged soothingly. “It’s about
Jinny.”
“Oi bain’t a-gooin’ to sell Jinny neither.”
Elijah winced. Was it divination or drivel, he wondered.
“You might as well sell her,” he said boldly. “Look how she’s
mucking up your business, muddling everything.” And rising and
pulling out the pot again, he banged it down on the table.
“My Jinny muddle things! Git out o’ my house!”
Before the Gaffer’s blazing spectacles and furious fangs Elijah
backed doorwards.
“Not before it’s set right,” he said, assured of his line of retreat.
“The Quarleses don’t make muddles. For a hundred year——”
“Oh, Jinny’s been all right the last hundred years,” he interrupted
impatiently. “It’s the last few weeks I complain about! I hope it’s not
sunstroke.”
“My Jinny!” The Gaffer’s anger died. “She went away singin’ as
merry as could be, my little mavis,” he said anxiously.
 “Then what do you make of that?” Elijah indicated the pot.
The old man unwrapped it slowly, and readjusting his spectacles
spelt out the label. “Oliver’s Depil—Depil—” he stumbled on. “Is that
pills?”
“No, it’s for the hair.”
“Well, that’s what you want, ain’t it?” he said naïvely.
Mr. Skindle coloured up. “But this is to take off the hair,” he
explained.
“Well, you can’t do that,” chuckled Daniel, “bein’ more a ’Lisha
than a ’Lijah.”
“Oh yes, I can,” said Elijah, his every dot bristling. “But if I hadn’t
been a noticing man, I should have undone all the good of months
of my pots of hair-restorer.”
“Whichever way it be, ’tis agen Nature,” said the Gaffer. “The
Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But pots be as like as peas.
That’s the shopman’s fault, not Jinny’s.”
“Oh, indeed!” cried Elijah savagely. “And what about her bringing
me hairpins?”
“Hairpins!” gasped the Gaffer. “Hairpins for a man without hair!”
“Even Samson in his prime didn’t want hairpins!” Elijah pointed
out angrily. “But that’s what she brought me a packet of last week,
instead of tobacco.”
“Sarve ye right, ye unswept chimbley,” the Gaffer growled, with a
grin.
“That ain’t serving me right,” riposted Elijah. “That’s serving me
wrong,” he added with redoubled wit. “And wouldn’t take ’em back
neither, the little minx, maintained I’d ordered ’em for my ma.”
“Well, she’d want hairpins, wouldn’t she, with all that beautiful
raven hair,” said the Gaffer, turning serious. “Happen you ordered
’em for her.”
“I never order anything for her,” said Elijah, waiving the
description of her chevelure.
 “More shame to you, then, young man. Ye don’t desarve to have
her. Same as ye’re too stingy to pay for the hairpins, ye’d best give
’em to her with Daniel Quarles’s love.”
“I’m not stingy!” retorted Elijah hotly. “Would I be keeping my
mother, with the poorhouse so handy, and me the youngest, too, if
Elijah Skindle wasn’t the most generous man in Chipstone? But I
won’t pay for Jinny’s woolgathering. No wonder everybody’s going to
the coach!”
“The coach?” repeated Daniel Quarles. “What coach?”
“Hasn’t Jinny told you?” cried Elijah, equally astonished. “The
handsomest pair of black horses——”
“A funeral coach?” half-whispered the Gaffer, paling. The notion
of slaughtering Methusalem had already brought the thought of
death unpleasantly near.
“You and Jinny may well call it so, old sluggaby,” said Elijah
grimly.
The old man fell back into his chair. “Nobody never needed no
funeral coaches here!” he quavered. “Our shoulders on the corpse-
path was good enough for us. ’Twas onny that obstinacious little
Dap, when poor Pegs laid by the wall, as wanted one.”
“Who’s talking of funeral coaches?” snapped Mr. Skindle.
“Anyhow I’ve got to have that pot changed.”
“Git out o’ my house!” repeated the ancient for the fourth time,
hurling the pot out of the window. Luckily it fell on grass.
Elijah’s patience was at an end. Besides it had now occurred to
him he might cut off Jinny on the route, away from this tiresome
nonagenarian. The effort to woo her through him had been baffled
by his inconsequence.
“Who’s hankering after your wooden chairs? I’ve got horsehair at
home,” he retorted crushingly.
As he climbed into his trap he heard the bolts shot behind him.
But just as he was clucking off his horse, the Gaffer’s head popped
frenziedly through the casement.
 “Stop thief!” it cried. “Stop!”
“You be careful what you’re saying, old cockalorum,” said Elijah
angrily, lashing his horse with vicarious wrath. “And pick up that pot.
I shan’t pay for it.”
“You’ve stole my spectacles! Oi can’t find ’em nowheres!”
“Why, you’ve got ’em on!” Elijah called back contemptuously.
So eagerly did his horse respond to the whip and the homeward
impulse that Elijah had the satisfaction of passing the equally
enthusiastic Methusalem before he could pull up. He was not even
sure that this arrogantly gowned Jinny had acknowledged his salute.
She would be at her door before he could turn—confound it! Why
had he not waited another moment or started earlier and cut her off
at a remoter point? To face that old dodderer again would be an
anti-climax.

IV
So swiftly did Daniel Quarles nod again over his big Bible that by
the time Jinny had got Methusalem stabled, she could not rouse him
to undo the bolts, and all her merry whistling as she neared the
latch was a wasted pretence. This protective habit of his indoors was
a recent development, coinciding curiously with the advent of the
coach she was concealing from him, and these closed doors—even
his bedroom was now locked from within—annoyed and alarmed her.
She had visions of him agonizing in his bed and herself reduced to
breaking open the door. Perhaps even now he was ill, dying, dead!
She dashed to the living-room window—stumbling over a pot outside
it. Ah, thank God, that dear, peaceful grey head, that sonorous
snore!
Pausing now to pick up the mysterious pot, she was distressed
again. The passing of Elijah was explained! Miss Gentry’s Depilatory
she had brought to Mr. Skindle, Mr. Skindle’s Hair Restorer to Miss
Gentry. He had come to complain, but unable to get admission, he
had flung the pot on the path. Oh, plaguy similarity of potted
pomades—fatal double error—she had killed two clients with one
stone. Her eyes filled with tears: even with a notebook she could not
keep straight.
So guilty did she look as she scrambled noiselessly through the
casement, that an observer would have thought her a burglar.
Creeping past her grandfather, she opened the house-door,—the
gigantic key that used to hang on the beam was now always in the
lock—brought in the carton with the wedding-cake from the cart,
and placed it on the chest of drawers for unfailing reminder in the
morning. Then swiftly changing into her old frock and hanging up
the new behind a corner-curtain, she donned her apron and stole
into the kitchen. Finally, to lay the table, she must with loving hands
uplift the venerable head.
The ancient had not slept off his perturbation, though he did not
remember the cause of it, and seeing his supper still unlaid, he was
righteously wroth. “A muddler, mucking up everything—that’s what
you be!” he said, repeating unconsciously Elijah’s indictment. And
Jinny, remembering the pot that now stood by the wedding-cake,
went about wanly, unresentfully, with movements lacking their
wonted deftness. Her grandfather had already forgotten the
suggestion of sunstroke, much as it had shaken him: for her actual
pallor he had no eye.
When she finally brought in the meal, she found him risen and
standing tranced before the great wedding-cake, gazing dazedly at
its elaborately frosted architecture.
“You didn’t want to open it,” she cried with irrepressible
petulance as she hooked down the pasteboard lid.
He ignored the reproach. “Weddin’s and funerals in one day,” he
brooded. “Pomps and wanities.”
“Come to the table, Gran’fer,” she said more gently.
“Pomps and wanities!” he repeated. “Who’s this for?”
“It’s for Farmer Gale’s wedding—’twas too late to deliver it. Come
along.”
 “In my day folks made their own weddin’-cakes. And dedn’t want
no funeral coaches neither. The church-path or the farm-wagon——”
“Come along!” She took his arm. “There’s no funeral coaches
here.”
A whining and scratching at the door made a welcome diversion.
Nip, back from the hunting-path, sneaked in, aware of sin, with ears
flat, tail abased, and sidelong squint.
“Ain’t seen that for days,” said the Gaffer. “Where’s that been?”
“I don’t know,” she lied, glad of Nip’s guilty air, for to explain
would reveal the coach. “On the razzle-dazzle, I suppose.”
After supper, she remembered a box must be put in the ante-
room that had been left with her to be called for. It was stupid not to
have brought it in at once, ere the cart had been put in its shed—as
stupid as her pot-swapping. In a sudden fear that if unremoved to-
night she would carry it off to Farmer Gale’s wedding just when the
owner would be coming for it, she asked her grandfather to lend a
hand with it. It was an unfortunate request, for as the still sinewy
veteran was dragging his end over the sill, he said weirdly: “There
ain’t no man in Bradmarsh more lugsome’n that. Who wants your
new-fangled coach?”
“What coach?” murmured Jinny, half puzzled, half apprehensive.
“The funeral coach.” He stood still. “Where else ’ould a coffin
goo?”
“Rubbish, Gran’fer. There’s no funeral coach.” Her little silvery
voice rang out. “Heave away, my Johnny. Come along, Gran’fer, I’ve
got to rub down Methusalem—you’ll be too tired now.”
“No funeral coach?” he repeated slowly, loosing the box.
“You’ve been dreaming, Gran’fer.”
“But the two black horses——”
Her heart beat like a criminal’s on the eve of detection.
“Nightmares!” she laughed. “What did I say?”
“But he said——!”
“Who said?”
 “Annie’s buoy-oy.”
“Annie’s——?”
“ ’Lijah, he calls hisself.”
“Elijah? And did he go up in a chariot of fire with the horses?”
And more than ever incensed against Mr. Skindle, she hastily started
her carrier’s chanty:

“There is Hey, there is Ree.”

Automatically his sepulchral bass exuded, and his arms reclasped

the box:

“There is Hoo, there is Gee——”

Then together their antithetical voices rolled out joyously as the

box moved forward:

“But the bob-tailed mare bears the bells away.”

Inwardly she was thinking that a “funeral coach” was just what it
was. Did its bells not ring the knell of all the peaceful past? Yes, it
was the hearse of her past, of her youth. And somehow—somehow
—she must readjust herself to the strange raw cruelty of the
present.

V
She resettled him before his Bible. But when she returned from
the stable, he had wandered again to the chest of drawers, and was
now holding up the pot.
“And ye told me Oi was dreamin’!” he said angrily. “Why did ye lie
to me?”
“What do you mean, Gran’fer?” she said, flushing.
“How did that pot come here?”
 “I brought it, of course.”
“No, you dedn’t. Annie’s good-for-nawthen son brought it.”
“But I brought it in,” she persisted. “It was lying on the path.”
“Ah! Oi mind me now—he threw it at me.”
“The wretch!” said Jinny, believing him. “Poor Gran’fer!” she cried
with self-reproach, patting his hairy hand. “But it’s bedtime. Come
along!”
“Why did ye lie to me?” he repeated, unappeased.
“There’s no funeral coach,” she persisted. But even as she spoke,
the faint tooting of a horn was heard from afar. Nip, idly gulping at
flies, pricked up his ears; the ancient uttered a cry:
“The coach! The coach!”
Jinny’s hand clutched his more tightly. They could now hear the
distant rattling and jingling—the Flynt Flyer was incredibly coming
their way, along that grass-grown road. What was it doing by that
lonely Common, she wondered tremulously. What customers were
there to steal here? Did the pirate hanker even after Uncle
Lilliwhyte?
“You’ll lose your beauty sleep, Gran’fer!” She drew him towards
the corkscrew staircase. But he broke from her convulsively and
hobbled out into the path, and stood with hand at ear towards the
advancing clatter. To be seen staring at its meteoric passing would
be too dreadful.
“Go in, Nip,” she cried with unwonted harshness. “Are you
coming, Gran’fer?” she said, following the dog, “or shall I bolt you
out? Must bolt up against thieves, you know.” And she began singing
cheerily:

“There is Hey, there is Ree”

“Nay, ’tis the black hosses that bears the bells away, curse ’em.
What should coaches be doing in these parts?”
“Same as me, I suppose,” she said with desperate lightness. “It’s
only that young man who fancies himself a-driving and a-blowing.”
 “A young man come to steal my business!”
“Well, one can’t lock that up! Come in, Gran’fer.”
“Oi’ll lock him up! What’s the thief’s name?”
“He’s not a thief. It’s the young man from Frog Farm.”
“That whippersnapper! Come with a coach to drive over you and
me——!”
“That’s just what he’d try to do if we stand here! Come inside—
the jackanips’ll only think we’re envying his bonkka turn-out.”
The argument and the touch of idiom succeeded, though she
could feel his form shaking with passion as she drew him in. “Why
did ye keep it from me?” he asked pitifully.
“Because I knew you’d get in a state.” As she shot the bolts, the
better to shut Will out, she realized that her beating heart was
somehow left outside, and that it was drawing her after it through
doors howsoever barred and windows howsoever fastened, if only to
watch the pageant of his passing.
“A funeral coach,” the ancient was mumbling, “you and Jinny may
well call it so, ole sluggaby.”
“Yes, indeed, we may, Gran’fer,” she said, smiling. “For it’s his
own funeral he’s conducting. He’ll soon come a cropper.”
“Blast him!” growled the Gaffer.
“Hush!” Jinny was shocked. “It’s all as fair as fair.”
“For over a hundred year we’ve fetched and carried ’twixt
Bradmarsh and Chipstone, and now this scallywag with his new-
fangled black hosses——” A fit of coughing broke off the speech,
and he suddenly looked so much like the last stage of man in the
Spelling-Book that Jinny had to put him back into his chair.
“Didn’t I say you’d get into a state? But you know there’s more
carrying than I—than we can manage. Haven’t you sent lots of our
customers away?”
“Curse ’em!” said the Gaffer comprehensively. “Warmin! And Oi
told ’em sow to their head!”
 “He’s only got our leavings, you see.” And she burst out in gay
parody:

“There is black, both of black,

Let ’em run till they crack,
’Tis Methusalem bears the bells away.”

But the bells were now jingling nearer and nearer—jingling in

victorious arrogance. The old man started up again in his chair. “How
dare Caleb Flynt’s lad set hisself up agen me?”
“Don’t, Gran’fer.” She pressed him down. “Competition, folks call
it. He’s got to earn his living just like us.”
“Nobody shan’t come competitioning here.” He broke from her
again. “Daniel shall be an adder what biteth the hoss heels.” He
began unbolting the door.
“You’ll never be able to bite his horse heels,” she urged. “They fly
by like the wind.”
She had a sick fear the old man would hurl himself at the bridles,
be dragged to death. But to her astonishment, ere he had lifted the
latch, she heard the horses slowing down. The eight sounding hoofs,
the clanging swingle-trees and harness, the great road-grinding
equipage, were actually coming to a halt at her porch.
“Whoa, Snowdrop! Easy there, Cherry-blossom!” She knew the
humour of these names of theirs, as she knew from a hundred
channels of gossip everything about their owner, even to the identity
of the blonde young female from Foxearth Farm who was so
persistently a passenger.
So he had been forced to humiliate himself, to make the first
approach—it was she who had, after all, been the conqueror, who
had held out the longer! And in a swift flood of emotion she felt
more than ever the injustice of her grandfather’s standpoint. Will
had not “come competitioning.” It had all been unpremeditated. The
horses had been left on his hands by that harum-scarum Showman.
And anyhow, was he not serving the countryside better than she
with her ramshackle little cart? But whatever the rights and the
wrongs, a scene between the two men must be prevented.
“He’s come to eat humble pie, Gran’fer,” she whispered. “But we
don’t see people after office hours—and it’s your bedtime.”
“Oi’ll show him who’s who,” said the Gaffer, disregarding her.
“But you can’t do that like this!” she urged with the cunning of
desperation. “Put on your Sunday smock.”
“Ay, ay! Oi’ll larn him to come crakin’ and vauntin’.” His face lit up
with baleful satisfaction, as he thought of the rare stitching in the
gathers and patterns of that frock of fine linen.
As Jinny, relieved, was sheep-dogging him up to his room, they
heard the butt-end of a whip beating at the house-door.
“Daniel Quarles takes his time, young man,” the Gaffer observed
to the cobwebbed corkscrew staircase. And to Jinny, when she shut
his door on him, he called back: “Do ye don’t forgit to put out the
beer. And two glasses.”

VI
That imperious butt-end gave no time to change back to her own
ostentatious costume. But she did not pause even to tear off her
flecked apron. After all, in face of his surrender, she could forgo
arrogance of appearance. Besides, he would scarcely have time to
notice anything, so swiftly must she be rid of him—however she
might savour his surrender—before her grandfather could re-
descend upon him. True, the call for beer showed a relaxed tension,
but who could predict the effect of quaffing it upon two hot-
tempered males? Ignoring the injunction, she hurried to the house-
door.
“Good evening, Miss Boldero.”
She was a shade disconcerted by the formality. But a great waft
of the old friendship seemed to emanate from his frank eyes and the
red hair his hat-lifting uncovered. She felt herself drawn to that
flame like a poor little moth: she wanted to fall upon his
magnanimous morning-jacket, to sob away her sin of pride.
“Good evening, Mr. Flynt,” she murmured.
He was astonished at the sight of her, and taken aback. Mentally
he had shaken her off, had ridden over her by force of will, finding
occupation and exhilaration in his new and prosperous adventure;
finding consolation, too, in the creamy beauty of the girl who
shuttled with such suspicious frequency in the Flynt Flyer. Blanche
suggested not only cream but butter, so pliant and pattable did she
seem, so ready to take the impress of Will’s personality. That was
very restful after the intense irritativeness of the rival carrier.
For irritativeness still remained to him Jinny’s essence—even in
their alienation. Her horn-blowing still jarred, her pink muslin dress
was a new provocation. He was vexed at her jog-trot apathy when
their vehicles passed, an apathy that took the sting out of his speed.
He was piqued that she did not complain to any one of his
competition, that she took no steps of reprisal, made no objection
even to Nip’s visits to him. But the central irritation in all these
fleeting glimpses and encounters had been her prettiness.
Now, seeing her close for the first time since their quarrel at the
cattle-market, and without her being whisked away, he had a shock.
Why, she was not pretty at all: she was shabby and wan! Where was
the sparkle that had haunted the depths of him? The real Jinny was,
it suddenly became patent, a worn creature with shadows under her
eyes and little lines on her forehead. How could he ever have
imagined her attractive? Why, Blanche was like a sultana beside her.
But if the thrill he had expected to feel was replaced by this dull
disappointment, another emotion did not fail to supervene. It was
pity—pity not unmixed with compunction. Had it been so manly as
he had thought, to come interfering with her business, violating the
immemorial local tradition which assigned the carrying to a Quarles?
“Won’t you come in?” she was forced to say, seeing him silent
and petrified in the porch.
 “Thank you—I’ve only brought this from Miss Gentry,” he
answered in awkward negation. He had come to jeer, but now he
held the pot of Hair Restorer apologetically.
Jinny went from white to red. It was the supreme humiliation.
Not only had he not come to make it up: he had come at the
culminating moment of his triumph—sent as a carrier to her! And
sent not merely with a parcel, but with the proof of her blundering!
“How kind of her!” she said, taking it, but neither her hand nor
her voice was steady. “Did she send any message with it?”
“Not particularly.” He had meant to rub in Miss Gentry’s
denunciations of female stupidity, to demand the other pot, but his
heart failed.
“Well, thank her for her present,” said poor Jinny, struggling hard
for composure. “And tell her I’ll be giving her something in return on
my next round.”
He suppressed a smile; shamed from it by the pathos of her
courage.
“I guess she means it for your grandfather,” he said chivalrously.
“Perhaps she does,” Jinny murmured. She turned away to close
the door on herself. The beautiful black horses pawed the ground
impatiently. Will shuffled and squirmed less gracefully—there seemed
nothing to do but to go. Had he not refused to step inside? But he
had taken her at the end of his long round, he had deposited all his
passengers and packages, and he felt loth to leave her thus. A
resolution was forming within him—generating so rapidly in the
warmth of compunction and renewed comradeship, that possibly the
germs of it had already taken root in his subconsciousness when
Nip’s label brought him her sneer at his lack of a guard.
“It’s very hot,” he fenced, lingering. “Can I have a glass of
water?”
She started, remembering the Gaffer’s admonition.
“Oh, won’t you have a glass of beer?”
“No, thanks, just Adam’s ale.”
 Almost liquefied herself by feeling this son of Adam needed her,
—even thus slightly—she moved swiftly to and fro, returning with
the glass. But not so swiftly that she had not smuggled Oliver’s
Depilatory and the wedding-cake into the kitchen in case he should
yet come in. He took the glass, managing to touch her cold
trembling fingers.
“Much obliged,” he said, after a deep draught, and this time it
was her fingers that were drawn, though less consciously, to touch
his round the returned glass. Then, swallowing something harder
than water, “I’ve been thinking about it all, Jinny, and I’m sorry——”
he blurted.
“Ha!” Her heart leapt up again.
“Sorry for you,” he explained.
“For me?” Her face hardened.
“I—I—mean,” he corrected, stammeringly, “sorry to hurt your
business.”
“You haven’t hurt my business! There’s room for both! It’s a fair
competition.”
“It’s very forgiving of you to say so. But I said I’d start a coach-
service and I had to make my word good, hadn’t I? A man can’t say
a thing and leave it empty air.”
“No.” In her new humility she was prepared to admire such solid
manhood.
“But that’s no reason why we should be bad friends, is it?”
She had thought that it was; now, that attitude of hers seemed
childishly foolish. Self-abasement kept her dumb.
“No reason,” he repeated, mistaking her silence for obstinacy,
“why we shouldn’t shake hands.”
“Only this glass,” she flashed more happily. But it shook in her
hand.
“Ah!” He sighed with satisfaction. The way to his proposition lay
open. He could broach it at once.
“Much better to pull together, eh?”
 “Much,” she echoed. How sweet to see the mists of folly and
bitterness rolling away, to feel the weight lifting from her heart.
Impulsively she held out her left hand, and as he clasped it, the
warmth that came to him from its cold firmness somewhat shook his
sense of Blanche’s surpassing charm. Charm, in fact, seemed—to his
bewilderment—to be independent of beauty. Or was it that what
radiated from Jinny’s little hand was a sense of capable
comradeship, missing from that large limp palm which received but
did not give? Well, but comradeship was what he wanted, what he
was now going to propose. And if charm was thrown in, so much the
better for the partnership.
“Aha, Son of Belial! So ye’ve come to bog and vaunt your horn
here!”
It was her forgotten grandfather. Startled from her daydream,
she dropped the glass and it shivered to fragments. In the dusk
Daniel Quarles, wizened though he was, loomed prophetic over them
in snowy beard and smock, his forehead gloomed with thunder and
his ancient beaver.

VII
Will drew out his white handkerchief, and tying it on his whip
waved it humorously.
The old man was disconcerted in his Biblical vein. “This be a
rummy ’un, Jinny. Is he off his head?”
“No, Gran’fer—that’s a flag of truce. A signal he’s got something
friendly to say.”
The Gaffer turned on her. “Then why don’t ye arx him inside like
a Christian, ’stead o’ breakin’ my glasses?”
“Thank you, Mr. Quarles,” said Will swiftly. He lowered the flag,
and almost rushed across the threshold. Jinny retreated before him,
and the trio passed silently through the ticking ante-chamber.
 “Why don’t ye loight the lamp?” the Gaffer grumbled. Jinny
gratefully flew to hide her perturbation in the kitchen. True, she
would only be throwing more light upon it. But the breathing-space
was welcome.
“Hadn’t you better have a look at my coach before it gets
darker?” Will was reminded to say.
“Curse your coach!” He had reawakened the prophet.
“Easy, there!” said Will, untying his handkerchief. “It’s to be a
family coach now, you see.”
“Family coach!” repeated Daniel, puzzled.
Jinny, fumbling at the lamp with butter-fingers, was glad it had
not yet illumined her blushes. For, mingled with the rapturous tumult
at her heart was a shrinking sense of impending publicity, of ethereal
emotions too swiftly and masterfully translated into gross
commitments. How had her mere passive acquiescence in a better
relationship warranted Will’s larger assumptions?
“Well, that’s what it’ll be if you accept my proposition, won’t it?”
she heard Will say.
“Set ye down, set ye down!” said Daniel. “What’s your
proposition? Jinny, why’re you lazying with that lamp?”
“In a moment, Gran’fer.”
She brought it in, its fat globe shedding a rosy glow over the
dingy wall-paper, the squat chairs, and the china shepherdesses. But
for herself she had no need of it. Everything seemed to her
transfigured, steeped in a heavenly light.
“Where’s that beer?” the ancient roared, its absence illumined.
She was glad to escape into the kitchen with her jug. Will moved
towards the front door.
“You come and see the coach, Mr. Quarles,” he persisted, “before
it’s too dark.”
“Dang your coach!” But the imprecation was mild and the ancient
shuffled to the door and surveyed the imposing equipage complete
from box to boot, with its glossy sable steeds. Will, swelling with
renewed pride, and mentally comparing it with the canvas-rotted,
lumbering little carrier’s cart and the aged animal on its last legs,
awaited with complacency the rapturous exclamations of the old
connoisseur.
But they did not come. “Ay, quite soizable, not such a bad coach,
rayther top-heavy. Where’s the leaders?”
“You don’t want more than two horses on these roads. Ain’t there
plenty o’ pair-horse coaches? Besides it don’t set up for a coach
exactly. I’m a carrier mainly!”
The old man winced at the word.
“You’ve called her the Flynt Flyer,” he said, peering at the painted
legend.
“And fly she does!” said Will, recovering his complacency.
“There’s life and spirit for you!” he added, as the horses pawed and
tossed their heads.
“More like an adder biting their heels!” said Daniel balefully. “But
Oi thought Oi heerd they was black!”
Will was outraged. “The Devil himself couldn’t be blacker!”
Daniel shook his head. “Mud-colour Oi should call the offside
hoss.”
“Well, there’s black mud, ain’t there?”
“Nearside hoss seems wheezy,” Daniel said sympathetically, as it
snorted with impatience.
“Wheezy? Cherry-blossom? Why, he could run ten miles more
without turning a hair.”
“Why, he’s sweatin’ like one o’clock!”
“So am I.” Will wiped his forehead furiously. “But that’s only the
weather.”
“Hosses don’t want to sweat when there’s nowt to carry.”
For a moment Will was knocked breathless. Recovering, he
smiled complacently. “Why, it’s all delivered. And it was a
deliverance. A terrible load. Phew!”
 “Nothing to ours! Lord, what a mort o’ custom! Look at that
whopping box we’ve just carried in.” He pointed to the ante-room.
“And all they other boxes!” he added with an inspiration, staring at
the lumber of his deceased and scattered family.
“Oh, I know,” Will conceded graciously, “that there are folks that
stick to Jinny—I mean to you—for old sake’s sake.”
“Ay, and you’re hankerin’ arter our hundred years’ connexion!”
“Eh?” said Will, dazed. He stole a reassuring glance at his
magnificent turn-out.
“Oi could see what ye were droivin’ at with your friendly
proposition. Want us to take you into pardnership.”
Will slapped his knee. “Well, I’m danged.”
Daniel chuckled fatuously. “Ho, ho! Guessed it, did Oi? Ye can’t
keep much from Daniel Quarles.” And in high good humour he laid
his hand on the young man’s shoulder and moved him back into the
house.
They found Jinny, who had just deposited the beer-jug on the
table, flitting up the stairs.
“Where ye gooin’, Jinny?” the Gaffer called after her.
“You’ve got things to talk over,” she called back.
“It ain’t secrets,” he crowed.
“Don’t run away,” Will added. “You’re the person most
concerned.”
But his blushing rival had disappeared. It was all too unnerving,
especially when the cracked mirror, aided by the fat lamp, showed
her what a shabby unkempt figure was setting out the beer-glasses
on the tiger-painted tray. As she could not change into her grand
gown under the invader’s eye, she was furtively carrying it up to her
grandfather’s bedroom.

VIII
 “Set ye down,” repeated the Gaffer. “Have a glass o’ beer.”
“No, thank you, I’ve had water.”
“And the glass too,” the old man chuckled. “That ain’t much of a
chate. Have a shiver o’ cake.”
Will did not like to refuse the slice till the Gaffer, after looking
round with growing grumpiness, brought in the great wedding-cake
from the kitchen, naked of its carton.
“Muddlin’ things away,” he was murmuring, as he posed it
pompously on the table, whence its high-built glory of frosted sugar
shed a festal air over the room.
“No, thank you!” cried Will hastily, divining a mistake—on the
Gaffer’s part, if not on Jinny’s. He guessed Farmer Gale was
concerned with it, for the whole countryside was agog with the
meanness of a wedding that did not include a labourers’ supper, nay,
even a holiday for them. The old man glared, bread-knife in hand.
“It would give me stomach-ache,” Will apologized.
The confession arrested the ancient. “Never had gullion in my
life,” he bragged, laying down the bread-knife. “But you young folks
——!”
“It’s like this,” said Will, taking advantage of this better mood.
“There’s not enough business to keep both of us going. Suppose I
buy you out.”
“Buy me out!” The prophet of wrath resurged. His arm shot out
for the bread-knife, pointing it door ward. “Git out o’ my house. For
a hundred year——”
Will got angry. “If I do get out, it will be a hundred years before I
come back. However,” he said, forcing a smile, “let’s put it another
way. Jinny shall come and help my business.”
“Jinny’ll never give up Methusalem.”
“Well, Methusalem’ll give up Jinny before very long—he can’t last
for ever. And she can keep him for Sundays—yes, that’ll be a good
idea. She can drive to chapel with him, not being a business animal.”
“And then she’d be clear of successors to Farmer Gale,” a side-
thought added.
“But Oi thought ’twas me you had a proposition for,” said the
Gaffer testily.
Will hastily readjusted his tactics. “Of course, of course. It’s really
lumping our businesses, instead of competing, don’t you see?”
“Well, dedn’t Oi say ’twas a pardnership you was arter?”
“Quite right. Only we’ll give poor old Methusalem a retiring
pension.”
“He, he!” croaked the Gaffer. He added honestly, “But Oi don’t
droive much meself nowadays. ’Tis onny the connexion ye’d be
getting and the adwice and counsel.”
“Just what I want,” said Will enthusiastically. “And I’m willing to
share and share alike.”
“Snacks?”
“Snacks!”
“It’s not a bad notion,” admitted the ancient.
“It’s a ripping notion.”
“Arter all, as you say, there’s no reason we should come into
colloosion.” He dropped the knife back on the table, and looked out
of the still open window.
“Ay, it’s a grand coach!” he gurgled.
“The talk of the countryside—only needs a turnpike road to beat
the train!” said Will, expanding afresh. “Snowdrop and Cherry-
blossom I call these horses for fun—because they’re so black, you
see.”
“Ay, black as the devil! And hark at ’em pawin’—there’s fire and
sperrit for you. That’s as foine a coach as ever Oi took up from. It’ll
not look amiss with Quarles painted ’stead o’ Flynt.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Will quickly. “Flynt must remain. The
Flynt Flyer—you can’t alter that.”
“Why can’t you?”
 “You can’t say the Quarles Flyer—the Quarles Creeper runs better
off the tongue. The Flynt Flyer—that goes together.”
“But it’s you and me’s got to goo together,” retorted the obstinate
old man. “Anyways it must be the Quarles and Flynt Flyer.”
“That’s too long. Besides the Flynt Flyer’s become a trade-mark—
known everywhere.”
“And what about Daniel Quarles, Carrier? That’s a better known
trade-mark. We’ll paint that.”
Will shook his head. “I can’t do that, but I’ll paint Flynt and
Quarles, Carriers, underneath the name of the coach. And that’s the
limit.”
“Daniel Quarles was always a peaceable man. . . . Quarles and
Flynt!” breathed the Gaffer beatifically.
“No, Flynt and Quarles,” Will corrected. “Flynt must go first.”
“Why must?”
“Don’t F come before Q? Folks would think we didn’t know our A
B C.”
“It would be more scholardy,” Daniel admitted.
Will proffered a conclusive hand. “Then it’s a bargain!” But Daniel
let the hand hover.
“Oi don’t droive much meself nowadays,” he repeated with
anxious honesty.
“We don’t expect it of the head of the firm,” said Will grandly;
“there’s substitutes and subordinates.” But his hand drooped with a
sense of bathos.
“Ay,” said the old man, swelling, “subordinators and
granddarters.” He fished for the hand.
“Oughtn’t we to let ’em know?” Will insinuated.
“Oi allus liked young Flynt, your father,” answered the Gaffer,
squeezing his fingers heartily. “And there warn’t much amiss with
your mother. A forthright family, aldoe Peculiar. Jinny droives a-
Sundays to chapel with the buoy-oys!”
 At which sudden failure—or rather resurgence—of memory, Will
felt more urgently than ever the need of getting Jinny’s consent
rather than the nonagenarian’s.
“You’re mighty lucky,” he said craftily, “to have a granddaughter
so spry. I reckon we’d better have her down and tell her.”
“Ay, that Oi be,” replied the Gaffer. “ ’Tis heartenin’ to hear her
singin’ up and down the house.”
Indeed a little silvery trill was reaching them now. To Will it
recalled more than one moment of mockery, but he felt nothing
provocative in this song except its parade of happiness. It seemed to
fling back his compassion, to be ominous of a refusal of his
proposition. Perhaps, on second thoughts, it might be better to leave
the old man to present her with a finished fact.
“Well, I must be getting home,” he said. “Glad that’s settled.”
Daniel clutched the knife again. “And we’ll cut the cake upon it.”
“No, no.” Mistake or no mistake, it seemed sacrilegious to slice
into this quasi-ecclesiastical magnificence.
“But it’s a bargain. Jinny shall cut it. Jinny!” he called up.
“Just coming, Gran’fer.”
“That’s too grand for a bargain,” Will remonstrated. “Would
almost do for a wedding,” he added with sly malice.
“Well, ain’t this for a pardnership?” the old man cackled. He
moved to the door and stood looking out on the horses. “Steady, my
beauties,” he said proprietorially. He shuffled to them and rubbed a
voluptuous hand along the satiny sheen of their skins. “Flynt and
Quarles,” he murmured.
Will had taken the opportunity to escape from the house. He now
prepared to light his lamps. Bats were swooping and darting,
weaving their weird patterns, but the air was still uncooled.
“Ye’re not a-gooin’ afore the cake’s cut!” the Gaffer protested.
“I’d best not see Jinny—she might only fly at me.”
“Rubbidge. When we’ve made it up!”
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