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The town was now stirring, and a fire-engine came, a machine which attended fires officially, and squirted on them officially, but was never known to do anything more, save to make the road sloppy. The thick, brick party walls of the houses adjoining saved them, but Mr. Furze's house was gutted from top to bottom. It was surrounded by a crowd the next day, which stared unceasingly.
"The thing is what is to be done?" "Now, I have a plan." In order to make Mrs. Furze's plan fully intelligible, it may be as well to explain that, up to the year 1840, the tradesmen of Eastthorpe had lived at their shops. But a year or two before that date some houses had been built at the north end of the town and called "The Terrace."
Furze had been there alone it would not so much have mattered, but the presence of wife and daughter sanctioned the vulgarity, not to say indecency. Mrs. Colston would naturally conclude they were accustomed to that sort of thing that the pipe, Mrs. Bellamy and the sausages, the absence of Mr. Furze's coat and waistcoat, were the "atmosphere," as Mrs. Furze put it, in which they lived.
Furze's advances. He knew that although Mr. Furze was restive under Tom's superior capacity, there was no doubt whatever of his honesty and ability. Besides, if it was business, why did the mistress interfere? Why did she thrust herself upon him? "coming down 'ere a purpose," thought Mr. Orkid Jim.
Colston took the money very affably, but still she did not return the visit. Meanwhile Mrs. Furze was doing everything she could to make herself genteel. Mrs. Furze's old furniture had, nearly all, been discarded or sold, and two new carpets had been bought.
Bellamy, she declared, when she met Catharine in the street the first market afternoon, that "she had all at once become a woman grown." Mrs. Furze's separation from her former friends was now complete, but she had, unfortunately, not yet achieved admission into the superior circle. She had done so in a measure, but she was not satisfied.
Wondering what he could be doing, Jim watched him for a moment. As soon as Mr. Furze's back was turned he went to the till, took out a sovereign which was in it, closely examined it, discovered a distinct though faint cross at the back of his Majesty George the Third's head, pondered a moment, and then put the coin back again.
To begin with, he was not so much in the shop. His absences in the Terrace at meal-times made a great gap in the day, and Tom Catchpole was constantly left in sole charge. Mr. Bellamy came home one evening and told his wife that he had called at Furze's to ask the meaning of a letter Furze had signed, explaining the action of a threshing-machine which was out of order.
It was Mrs. Furze's way when she proposed anything to herself, to take no account of any obstacles, and she had the most wonderful knack of belittling and even transmuting all moral objections. Mr. Charlie Colston was a well-known figure in Eastthorpe. He was an only son, about five feet eleven inches high, thin, unsteady on his legs, smooth-faced, unwholesome, and silly.
There was a small factory in Eastthorpe in which a couple of grindstones were used which were turned by water- power at considerable speed. One of them had broken at a flaw. It had flown to pieces while revolving, and had nearly caused a serious accident. The owner called at Mr. Furze's to buy another.
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