Mr. Skelmersdale

Skelmersdale is a young shopman who once worked at Aldington Corner, where he disappeared for three weeks and came back with clean cuffs, pockets full of dust, and a moody wretchedness he couldn't explain. His fiancée threw him over when he refused to account for his absence, and when word leaked that he'd been in Fairyland, the village gossip drove him to Bignor to escape the fuss. He's something of a snob, prickly about his dignity, yet the narrator's patient whisky-and-sympathy campaign suggests he's a man with a story worth coaxing out.