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Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931

"The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns"


"Oh! _Do_ you?" replied Ruth.
"Yes; going out to a strange country like that. She's not what you may
call the Canadian kind of girl. If she could only get something to do
here. ...If something could be found for her."
"Oh, I don't agree with you at _all_," said Ruth. "Do you really
think she ought to leave her parents just _now_? Her place is with
her parents. And besides, between you and me, she'll have a much better
chance of marrying there than in _this_ town--after all this. Of
course I shall be very sorry to lose her--and Mrs Cotterill, too.
But...."
"I expect you're right," Denry concurred.
And they sped on luxuriously through the lamp-lit night of the Five
Towns. And Denry pointed out his house as they passed it. And they both
thought much of the security of their positions in the world, and of
their incomes, and of the honeyed deference of their bankers; and also
of the mistake of being a failure.... You could do nothing with a
failure.

IV
On a frosty morning in early winter you might have seen them together in
a different vehicle--a first-class compartment of the express from Knype
to Liverpool.


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