All night an April shower lasting² ten hours had beaten with persistent³ impetuosity against the window-panes of Bursley, and hence half the town had slept ill. But at breakfast-time the clouds had been mysteriously drawn⁴ away, the winds had expired, and those drenched⁵ streets began to dry under the caressing⁶ peace of bright soft sunshine; the sky was pale blue of a delicacy⁷ unknown to the intemperate⁸ climes of the south. Janet Orgreave, entering the Clayhanger shop, brought into it with her the new morning weather. She also brought into it Edwin’s fate, or part of it, but not precisely⁹ in the sense commonly understood when the word ‘fate’ is mentioned between a young man and a young woman.

 

A youth stood at the left-hand or ‘fancy’ counter, very nervous. Miss Ingamells (that was) was married and the mother of three children, and had probably forgotten the difference between ‘demy’ and ‘post’ octavos; and this youth had taken her place and the place of two unsatisfactory maids in black who had succeeded her. None but males were now employed in the Clayhanger business, and everybody breathed more freely; round, sound oaths were heard where never oaths had been heard before. The young man’s name was Stifford, and he was addressed as ‘Stiff.’ He was a proof of the indiscretion of

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