The Card. Arnold Bennett

NETT

      The Card

      THE CARD

      If you want to be successful in life, what do you need? Do you need to be clever, good-looking, kind, hard-working, honest? Or just lucky?

      Denry Machin is a cheerful kind of fellow. When he meets a problem, he doesn’t lie down and cry about it. He looks for a chance, and when he sees one, he takes it with both hands. He has a lot of luck too, of course. It’s lucky that the Countess decides to give a ball, but how does Denry manage to get an invitation? It’s lucky that Mrs Codleyn has an argument with Denry’s employer, but how does Denry become Mrs Codleyn’s rent-collector? And it’s very lucky indeed for Denry when the Hjalmar goes down in the sea off Llandudno – but how does Denry make a thousand pounds out of it?

      The people of Bursley, the town where Denry lives, love a young man who makes them laugh. ‘He’s a real card,’ they say. They can’t wait to hear about his next adventure …

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DPOxford University Press is a department of the University of OxfordIt furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide inOxford New YorkAuckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei TorontoWith offices inArgentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine VietnamOXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countriesThis simplified edition © Oxford University Press 2008Database right Oxford University Press (maker)First published in Oxford Bookworms Library 20022 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1No unauthorized photocopyingAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address aboveYou must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirerAny websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the contentISBN 978 0 19 479111 3Word count (main text): 11,100 wordsFor more information on the Oxford Bookworms Library, visit www.oup.com/bookwormswww.oup.com/bookworms e-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478673 7e-Book first published 2012

      1

      THE DANCE

      Edward Henry Machin first saw daylight on the 27th of May, 1867, in Brougham Street in Bursley, the oldest of the Five Towns. Brougham Street goes down a hill to the canal, and contains a number of potbanks or pottery factories as well as some small houses. The rent for one of these houses was not high – only about twenty-three pence a week.

      Edward Henry’s mother (his father was dead) lived by making and washing clothes for fine ladies. She did not often laugh, and if you tried to argue with her, you never got very far. She was a woman of few words, and saved time every day by calling her son Denry, instead of Edward Henry.

      Denry did not work hard at school, and boys who were lazy and not very clever usually just found jobs in the potbanks. Luckily, at the age of twelve, he won a place at the best school in Bursley. It happened like this. On the second day of the examination, Denry arrived a little early. As he walked around the examination room, he came to the teacher’s desk, where he saw a list of names with the marks for the first day of the examination. The highest possible mark was thirty, but next to his name he saw the number 7. The numbers were written in pencil, and the pencil was on the desk. He picked it up, looked around the empty room, and at the door, and then wrote a 2 in front of the 7. Of course, this was not honest, but how many truly honest schoolboys are there? Denry was no worse than most of them.