tosh; but I wasn't the sort to go into Parliament, unless I meant to

be a lawyer. Did I mean to be a lawyer? It cost no end of money,

and was full of uncertainties, and there were no judges nor great

solicitors among myrelations. "Young chapsthink they get on by

themselves," said my uncle. It isn't so. Not unless they take

their coats off. I took mine off before I was your age by nigh a

year."

We were at cross purposes from the outset, because I did notthink

men lived to make money; and I was obtuse to the hints he was

throwing out at the possibilities of his own potbank, not willfully

obtuse, but just failing to penetrate his meaning. Whatever City

Merchants had or had not done for me, Flack, Topham and old Gates

had certainly barred my mistaking the profitable production and sale

of lavatory basins and bathroom fittings for the highestgood. It

was only upon reflection that it dawned upon me that the splendid

chance for a young fellow with my uncle, "me, having no son of my

own," was anything but an illustration for comparison with my own

chosen career.

I stillremember very distinctly my uncle's talk,-he loved to speak

"reet Staffordshire"-his rather flabby face with the mottled

complexion that told of crude ill-regulated appetites, his clumsy

gestures-he kept emphasising his points by prodding at me with his

finger-the ill-worn, costly, grey tweed clothes, the watch chain of

plain solid gold, and softfelt hat thrust back from his head. He

tackled me first in the garden after lunch, and then tried to raise

me to enthusiasm by taking me to his potbank and showing me its

organisation, from the dusty grinding mills in which whitened men

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