Elizabeth, give Mr.
Ascott a chair." While doing so, and before her disappearance, Elizabeth took a rapid observation of the visitor, whose name and history were perfectly familiar to her.

Most small towns have their hero, and Stowbury's was Peter Ascott, the grocer's boy, the little fellow who had gone up to London to seek his fortune, and had, strange to say, found it.
Whether by industry or luck--except that industry is luck, and luck is only another word for industry--he had gradually risen to be a large city merchant, a dry-salter I conclude it would be called, with a handsome house, carriage, etc.

He had never revisited his native place, which indeed could not be expected of him, as he had no relations, but, when asked, as was not seldom of course, he subscribed liberally to its charities.
Altogether he was a decided hero in the place, and though people really knew very little about him, the less they knew the more they gossiped, holding him up to the rising generation as a modern Dick Whittington, and reverencing him extremely as one who had shed glory on his native town.

Even Elizabeth had conceived a great idea of Mr.
Ascott.

When she saw this little fat man, coarse and common looking in spite of his good clothes and diamond ring, and in manner a curious mixture of pomposity and awkwardness, she laughed to herself, thinking what a very uninteresting individual it was about whom Stowbury had told so many interesting stories.