It was the eve of Good Friday. Within the modest parlour of No. 13 Primrose
Terrace a little man, wearing a gray felt hat and a red neck-tie, stood admiring
himself in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. Such a state of things
anywhere else would have had no significance whatever; but circumstances
proverbially alter cases. At 13 Primrose Terrace it approached the dimensions of
a portent.
Not to keep the reader in suspense, the little man was Benjamin Quelch, clerk in
the office of Messrs. Cobble & Clink, coal merchants, and he was about to carry
out a desperate resolution. Most men have some secret ambition; Benjamin's
was twofold. For years he had yearned to wear a soft felt hat and to make a trip
to Paris, and for years Fate, in the person of Mrs. Quelch, had stood in the way
and prevented the indulgence of his longing. Quelch being, as we have hinted,
exceptionally small of stature, had, in accordance with mysterious law of
opposites, selected the largest lady of his acquaintance as the partner of his joys.
He himself was of a meek and retiring disposition. Mrs. Quelch, on the other
hand, was a woman of stern and decided temperament, with strong views upon
most subjects. She administered Benjamin's finances, regulated his diet, and
prescribed for him when his health was out order. Though fond of him in her own
way, she ruled him with a rod of iron, and on three points she was inflexible. To
make up for his insignificance of stature, she insisted on his wearing the tallest
hat that money could procure, to the exclusion of all other head-gear; secondly,
on the ground that it looked more "professional," she would allow him none but
black silk neckties; and lastly, she would not let him smoke. She had further an
intense repugnance to all things foreign, holding as an article of faith that no
good thing, whether in art, cookery, or morals, was to be found on other than
English soil. When Benjamin once, in a rash moment, suggested a trip to
Boulogne by way of summer holiday, the suggestion was received in a manner
that took away his appetite for a week afterward.
The prohibition of smoking Quelch did not much mind; for, having in his salad
days made trial of a cheap cigar, the result somehow satisfies him that tobacco
was not in his line, and he ceased to yearn for it accordingly. But the tall hat and
the black necktie were constant sources of irritation. He had an idea, based on
his having once won a drawing prize at school, that nature had intended him for
an artist, and he secretly lamented the untoward fate which had thrown him away
upon coals. Now the few artists Benjamin had chanced to meet affected a soft
and slouchy style of head-gear, and a considerable amount of freedom, generally
with a touch of colour, in the region of the neck. Such, therefore, in the fitness of
