Early in November Mr Tappitt officially announced his intention of abdicating¹, and the necessary forms and deeds and parchment obligations were drawn² out signed and sealed, for the giving up of the brewery³ to Luke Rowan. Mr Honyman’s clerk revelled⁵ in thinly covered folio sheets to the great comfort and profit of his master; while Mr Sharpit went about Baslehurst declaring that Tappitt was an egregious⁶ ass⁷, and hinting that Rowan was little better than a clever swindler. What he said, however, had but little effect on Baslehurst. It had become generally under stood that Rowan would spend money in the town, employing labour and struggling to go ahead, and Baslehurst knew that such a man was desirable as a citizen. The parchments were prepared, and the signatures were written with the necessary amount of witnessing, and Tappitt and Rowan once more met each other on friendly terms. Tappitt had endeavoured to avoid this, pleading, both to Honyman and to his wife, that his personal dislike to the young man was as great as ever; but they had not permitted him thus to indulge his wrath⁸. Mr Honyman pointed⁹ out to Mrs Tappitt that such ill humour might be very detrimental¹⁰ to their future interests, and Tappitt had been made to give way. We may as well declare at once that the days of Tappitt’s domestic dominion¹¹ were over, as is generally the case with a man who retires from work and allows himself to be placed, as a piece of venerable furniture, in the chimney corner. Hitherto he, and he only, had known what funds could be made available out of the brewery for household purposes; and Mrs Tappitt had been subject, at every turn of her life, to provoking intimations of. reduced profits: but now there was the clear thousand a year, and she could demand her rights in accordance with that sum. Tappitt, too, could never again stray away from home with mysterious hints that matters connected with malt and

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