Anna of the Five Towns

Anna of the Five Towns
by Arnold Bennett
1902
Chapter 1
THE KINDLING OF LOVE
The yard was all silent and empty under the burning afternoon heat,
which had made its asphalt springy like turf, when suddenly the
children threw themselves out of the great doors at either end of the
Sunday-school--boys from the right, girls from the left--in two howling,
impetuous streams, that widened, eddied, intermingled and formed
backwaters until the whole quadrangle was full of clamour and
movement. Many of the scholars carried prize-books bound in vivid
tints, and proudly exhibited these volumes to their companions and to
the teachers, who, tall, languid, and condescending, soon began to
appear amid the restless throng. Near the left-hand door a little girl of
twelve years, dressed in a cream coloured frock, with a wide and heavy
straw hat, stood quietly kicking her foal-like legs against the wall. She
was one of those who had won a prize, and once or twice she took the
treasure from under her arm to glance at its frontispiece with a vague
smile of satisfaction. For a time her bright eyes were fixed expectantly
on the doorway; then they would wander, and she started to count the
windows of the various Connexional buildings which on three sides
enclosed the yard-- chapel, school, lecture-hall, and chapel-keeper's
house. Most of the children had already squeezed through the narrow
iron gate into the street beyond, where a steam-car was rumbling and
clattering up Duck Bank, attended by its immense shadow. The
teachers remained a little behind. Gradually dropping the pedagogic
pose, and happy in the virtuous sensation of duty accomplished, they
forgot the frets and fatigues of the day, and grew amiably vivacious
among themselves. With an instinctive mutual complacency the two

sexes mixed again after separation. Greetings and pleasantries were
exchanged, and intimate conversations begun; and then, dividing into
small familiar groups, the young men and women slowly followed their
pupils out of the gate. The chapel-keeper, who always had an injured
expression, left the white step of his residence, and, walking with
official dignity across the yard, drew down the side-windows of the
chapel one after another. As he approached the little solitary girl in his
course he gave her a reluctant acid recognition; then he returned to his
hearth. Agnes was alone.
'Well, young lady?'
She looked round with a jump, and blushed, smiling and screwing up
her little shoulders, when she recognised the two men who were
coming towards her from the door of the lecture-hall. The one who had
called out was Henry Mynors, morning superintendent of the
Sunday-school and conductor of the men's Bible-class held in the
lecture-hall on Sunday afternoons. The other was William Price,
usually styled Willie Price, secretary of the same Bible-class, and son
of Titus Price, the afternoon superintendent.
'I'm sure you don't deserve that prize. Let me see if it isn't too good for
you.' Mynors smiled playfully down upon Agnes Tellwright as he idly
turned the leaves of the book which she handed to him. 'Now, do you
deserve it? Tell me honestly.'
She scrutinised those sparkling and vehement black eyes with the
fearless calm of infancy. 'Yes, I do,' she answered in her high, thin
voice, having at length decided within herself that Mr. Mynors was
joking.
'Then I suppose you must have it,' he admitted, with a fine air of giving
way.
As Agnes took the volume from him she thought how perfect a man Mr.
Mynors was. His eyes, so kind and sincere, and that mysterious,
delicious, inexpressible something which dwelt behind his eyes: these
constituted an ideal for her.

Willie Price stood somewhat apart, grinning, and pulling a thin
honey-coloured moustache. He was at the uncouth, disjointed age,
twenty-one, and nine years younger than Henry Mynors. Despite a
continual effort after ease of manner, he was often sheepish and
self-conscious, even, as now, when he could discover no reason for
such a condition of mind. But Agnes liked him too. His simple, pale
blue eyes had a wistfulness which made her feel towards him as she felt
towards her doll when she happened to find it lying neglected on the
floor.
'Your big sister isn't out of school yet?' Mynors remarked.
Agnes shook her head. 'I've been waiting ever so long,' she said
plaintively.
At that moment a grey-haired woman with a benevolent but rather
pinched face emerged with much briskness from the girls' door. This
was Mrs. Sutton, a distant relative of Mynors'--his mother had been her
second cousin. The men raised their hats.
'I've just been down to make sure of some of you slippery folks for the
sewing-meeting,' she said, shaking hands with Mynors, and including
both him and Willie Price in an embracing maternal smile. She was
short-sighted and did