An excerpt   from The Card Edward Henry Machin first saw daylight on the 27thof May, 1867, in Brougham Street in Bursley, the oldest of the Five Towns. Brougham Street goes down a hill to the canal  .The rent   for one of these houses was not high -- only about twenty-two 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. 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 marks for the first day of the examination. The highest possible mark was 30, 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 them 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. What was Edward Henry's mother like?
Patient. Dishonest. Hard-working. Kind.