Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper occupied a large factory, with offices and showroom attached, in Dilborough. They had no address. The name of the firm alone was quite sufficient to find them. Some people added the word Dilborough; some simply put Surrey; some merely England. They were known to everybody. Their motto—“Perfect Purity”—was in every daily paper every day. And during those weeks when the pickle manufacturing was going on, every little hamlet within a radius of twenty miles was aware of the fact if the wind set in that direction.

There was no Pentlove in the firm, and no Postlethwaite, and hardly any Sharper. An ex-schoolmaster, Diggle by name, had secured the entire control of the business. He had no partners, though Sharper had a small interest in the firm. He had achieved this position by unscrupulousness and low cunning. For of real ability he had not a trace. In fact, the staff mostly called him Cain, because he was not able. Another point of resemblance was that he was not much of a hand at a sacrifice. He looked after the financial side of the business, and did a good deal of general interference in every branch of it.

The manufacturing side was under the control of Arthur Dobson, a red-faced man who had been with the firm for twenty years. He very wisely maintained its tradition of the very highest quality coupled with the very highest prices. “Perfect Purity.” It was an admitted fact that Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper actually used limes in the manufacture of lime juice. Another startling innovation was the use of calves’ feet in the preparation of calf’s-foot jelly. This was the more extravagant because, of course, only the front feet of the calf may be used for this purpose. Three back feet make one back-yard. Naturally the price was ruinous. But it all added to the reputation of the firm. And the best hotels thought it worth while to advertise that the pickles and preserves they provided were by Messrs. Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper. It may be as well to add that Arthur Dobson was a knave. When he was talking to Cain he always slated Sharper. When he was talking to Sharper he always slated Cain. His specialty was the continuous discovery of some cheaper place in which to lunch. He would ask Luke Sharper to join him in these perilous adventures, but Luke, in his sunny way, always refused.

“Standoffish,” said Dobson. “Damn standoffish.”

Luke Sharper represented the literary side of the business. He wrote all the advertisements. It was a rule of the firm that the advertisements should be scholarly, and that none should appear which did not contain at least one quotation from a classical language. Luke had also initiated the production of various booklets dealing with the materials and the methods of business. Nominally they were published; practically they were given away to any considerable purchaser. Some of these were written by Sharper himself. There was, for example, “The Romance of the Raspberry,” of which the Dilborough Gazette had said: “An elegant little brochure.” This was a great triumph. Even Diggle had to admit it. He had gone so far as to say that one of these fine days he would really have to think about making Sharper a partner. Other of the booklets were written in collaboration. For instance, in the composition of “Thoughts on Purity,” Sharper had the assistance of the Reverend Noel Atall.

Luke kept a set of these booklets, bound in lilac morocco, in his room at the office. He loved them. He was proud of them. He regarded them as his children, and would sit for hours patting them gently. As the issue of each booklet was limited to one hundred copies, and it was customary to present one of them with each order of £20 or upwards, some of them were out of print, and difficult to obtain. This had been enough to start the collectors. In book catalogues there would sometimes appear a complete set of the Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper booklets. And the price asked was gratifying. Luke fainted with joy the first time he saw this in the catalogue.

At one time he had been in the habit of taking the booklet home in order to read it aloud to Mabel. He never did it now. It was hopeless. No insight. No sympathy. No appreciation. No anything. Blind and deaf to beauty. But she really was a good housekeeper.

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Luke bicycled from home to business every morning, and from business to home every evening. He enjoyed this immensely. Every morning as he rode off he said to himself: “Further from Mabel. Further and further from Mabel. Every day, in every way, I’m getting further and further.” On his return journey in the evening he experienced the same relief in getting further from old Cain, and further from the office.

At the middle point of his journey it always seemed to him that he did not belong to the office any more, and that he did not belong to Mabel either. He was all his own, in a world by himself. He would go on in a snow-white ecstasy. Then he would get up, dust his clothes, and re-mount.

He had some habits, which, to the stupid and censorious, might almost seem childish. He cut for himself with his little hatchet a number of pegs, and always carried some of them in his pocket. At every point on the road where he fell off, he drove in a peg. It seemed to him a splendid idea. In a wave of enthusiasm he told Mabel all about it.

“Isn’t it absolutely splendid?” he asked.

“Dotty,” said Mabel, briefly.

He went out into the woodshed and cut more pegs.

One Monday morning as he started on his ride he saw before him at intervals all down the road little white specks. Yes, every one of those pegs had been painted white by somebody.

Who could have done it? He decided at once that it must be Mabel. She had repented of her harshness. She had made up her mind to try to enter more into his secret soul. This was her silent way of showing it. He determined that if this were so he would start kissing her again that evening. It overcame him completely. He drove in one more peg, and re-mounted.

“Mabel,” he said that night at dinner, “It’s good and sweet of you to have painted all those pegs white. It must have taken you a long time.”

“Never touched your rotten old pegs,” said Mabel. “Pass the salt.”

His ears twitched.

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Later that evening he sat alone in his bedroom. He also used this room as a study. He had been driven to this somewhat frowsty practice by the fact that he could not possibly sit in any room that had ever been called a den.A tap at the door. Ellen Morse entered to turn the bed down. A bright idea flashed across Luke’s mind. His ears positively jumped.

He believed in liberty, equality and familiarity, especially familiarity. So did Ellen Morse.

“Dot,” he said, “was it you who painted my fall-pegs white?”

“Well, old bean,” said Dot, “it was like this. I’ll tell you.” She seated herself on the bed. “You see, this house has only got four reception-rooms and eight bedrooms, and all the washing’s done at home, and all the dressmaking, and there’s a good deal of entertaining, mostly when you’re not there, and everything has to be right up to the mark. Well, as there were the whole two of us to do it, your old woman thought time would be hanging heavy on our hands, so now we do the garden as well. The other day Mr. Doom Dagshaw was lunching here, and they were going to play tennis afterwards. Your bit of skirt has some proper games with that Dagshaw. I watch them out of the pantry window in my leisure moments. Well, anyhow, I’d to mark out the tennis court, and I mixed up a bit more of the stuff than was needed, and I thought I might as well use it up on your pegs. You see, I get a half-Sunday off every three months, and it was only a fourteen-mile walk there and back. And I’m sure I didn’t know what else to do with my holiday.”

“Dot,” said Luke, “you seem to be able to enter into things. You get the hang of my ideas. Some do, some don’t. If you can sneak off for half-an-hour to-morrow evening we’ll go and play at boats together.”

“Boats?”

“Yes. You know the bridge. We get two pieces of wood, throw them in the stream on one side, then run across and watch them come out on the other. And the one that comes out first, wins. Won’t that be glorious?”

“Well, you are one to think of things,” said Dot.

(And now we’ll have a little novelty. The Great Novelists of to-day number their sections. We’ll have a number without any section. This has never been done be——

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