The Lion's Share
Baby's Bath
The Silent Brothers
The Nineteenth Hat
Vera's First Christmas Adventure
The Murder of the Mandarin
Vera's Second Christmas Adventure
The Burglary
News of the Engagement
Beginning the New Year
From One Generation to Another
The Death of Simon Fuge
In a New Bottle
In the Five Towns the following history is related by those who know itas something side-splittingly funny—as one of the best jokes that everoccurred in a district devoted to jokes. And I, too, have hithertoregarded it as such. But upon my soul, now that I come to write itdown, it strikes me as being, after all, a pretty grim tragedy.However, you shall judge, and laugh or cry as you please.
It began in the little house of Mrs Carpole, up at Bleakridge, on thehill between Bursley and Hanbridge. Mrs Carpole was the second MrsCarpole, and her husband was dead. She had a stepson, Horace, and a sonof her own, Sidney. Horace is the hero, or the villain, of the history.On the day when the unfortunate affair began he was nineteen years old,and a model youth. Not only was he getting on in business, not only didhe give half his evenings to the study of the chemistry of pottery andthe other half to various secretaryships in connection with theWesleyan Methodist Chapel and Sunday-school, not only did he savemoney, not only was he a comfort to his stepmother and a sort of uncleto Sidney, not only was he an early riser, a total abstainer, anon-smoker, and a good listener; but, in addition to the practice ofthese manifold and rare virtues, he found time, even at that tenderage, to pay his tailor's bill promptly and to fold his trousers in thesame crease every night—so that he always looked neat and dignified.Strange to say, he made no friends. Perhaps he was just a thought tooperfect for a district like the Five Towns; a sin or so might haveendeared him to the entire neighbourhood. Perhaps his loneliness wasdue to his imperfect sense of humour, or perhaps to the dull, unsmilingheaviness 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 andblue-eyed, as most little jockeys are, he had a smile and a scowl thatwere equally effective in tyrannizing over both his mother and Horace,and he was beloved by everybody. Women turned to look at him in thestreet. Unhappily, his health was not good. H