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Mr. Weston, whose own advertisement has most properly introduced him to us, did notice thieving Tom and his hurried departure, for he shook his head then a little sternly, as any elderly gentleman who himself is the father of rather a large family would; and he smiled a little too at having had the fortunate chance of teaching a rude boy a lesson in behaviour.

Whatever the lesson was, Tom Burt was extremely scared by it, and later that very afternoon a strange story was told in the town that a menagerie had passed through, and that one of the wild beasts, seen in a closed van in the High Street, was a horrid lion....

The Ford car had been in the street for some time before the children had spied it and before Miss Gipps walked by.

Mr. Weston, whose fatherly feelings we have already noticed, had permitted his fellow-traveller, who was a junior partner in the firm of Messrs. Weston and Company, to take a little refreshment—being the younger man of the two he was more apt to be hungry—in the dining-room of the Rod and Lion Hotel.

Evidently Mr. Weston, when left alone in charge of the car, had used the time, until he was interrupted by the impertinence of the children, for quiet meditation.

The atmosphere of the town was suitable to thought. In the air, this November afternoon, there was a dull and heavy feeling abroad, for the joyous expectation of Christmas hadn’t so far, unless with Miss Gipps, penetrated the weary autumn days. Nothing was happening of any importance in the town, and very little trade was being done, for, though a few farmers had visited the bank, the day was neither a market nor a fair day.

The winds of heaven were still and quiet too, for the autumn storms had finished their battering and had blown themselves out, and the clouds that had once travelled so swiftly round the world were now stopped dead and were hanging, a stupid, grey mass, over the town.

At the beginning of November the winter had startled the town with a brisk frost that killed the dahlias. This frost was followed, exactly as the Mayor, Mr. Board, predicted, by wild winds, westerly gales, and torrents of rain that washed the brewery chimney on the windward side.

The winds with their wild gusts intended to do some mischief, and succeeded, for they blew against a wall two elderly ladies who wished to go by train to Weyminster to attend a sale where, it was said, a pair of nice new shoes might be bought for five shillings, and broke a leg of one of them.

In the roof, too, of St. Mark’s Church a heavy block of oak, that had been placed there by the wise advice of a London architect to support a large beam, became dislodged, and fell in front of Mr. Board as he was walking up the aisle to receive the sacrament. He fell over it, to the great amusement of a pious old lady who knelt near and who wore a bonnet.

All this wind and rain had in its turn been followed by dark and dull weather, that made the High Church rector of St. Mark’s wish more earnestly than ever to go over to Rome—in reality as well as in doctrine.

So gloomy and sad was this sunless weather become, and so depressing to all in the town, that Mr. Milsom, a tailor in the High Street, would every morning go to his shop window, and looking out between two pairs of nicely ironed trousers, curse for half an hour by the town clock the fool who ever thought of inventing so hideous a thing as a town street with a church at one end and a prison at the other.

‘And where the hell are the girls?’ Mr. Milsom would conclude by saying; and then he would retire in a very sulky mood to eat his breakfast.

Maidenbridge appeared now to be fast asleep, except for the striking of the clock in the tower of St. Mark’s Church—nay, almost dead; and Lily, sitting in lonely state behind the elegant bar table in the genteel saloon at the Rod and Lion, could only wish peevishly, as she darned a silk stocking, that young men were a little more plentiful and the old ones more thirsty. She was grown tired of the stocking, and stepping daintily to the window, she looked out, but only saw a very common-looking car. With her eyes still upon it, she couldn’t help wishing that either the bank manager or Mr. Board, the Mayor, might enter and amuse her with pleasant talk such as she loved.

There were still some leaves in the walks of the town that hung mournfully from the trees and were noticed by one man—Mr. Burt, the town gardener, the father of Tom—with much annoyance. For Mr. Burt had, after the storms, swept up the leaves that were fallen, and he could see no reason why these others should remain hanging in the trees, except that, having malice in their hearts, they meant to make more work for him later on. He saw the leaves of these chestnut trees as mere summer decorations, and felt that they ought, if they had the least sense of decency, to fall all at once and be carried away in the corporation wheelbarrows, with high sides affixed.

Mr. Burt had known these trees for so long that he had grown to think of them as entirely artificial, and being so, they should, of course, function to order, as did the town gardens’ clock that faced all ways and behaved the same in all weathers. The leaves mocked the gardener by falling now, one at a time, instead of in showers as when the winds blew.

Mr. Burt was standing in the walks, with his broom in his hand and his wheelbarrow near. He looked up at the trees and cursed them.

‘It was most likely,’ he thought, ‘entirely owing to their stupid and ignorant habits that his wages were lowered.’

Mr. Burt approached one of the trees and angrily shook a bough that had a few leaves upon it. He hoped that this tree, at least, would permit him to finish with it. But not a leaf fell.

‘They be only waiting till I be busy in they gardens, the dirty cowards!’ said Mr. Burt gloomily.