Sten

A well-off, stiff, honourable clothier with a house on the market square in Sowerby, some fifty winters, father of the bride. No villain, but a man of pride and old hurt: ten winters ago dye from the channel ruined a batch of his white cloth; the guild fined Krecz the dyer, and the blame was never settled. He speaks in measure and price, never of feelings; his concession comes through a thing — a bolt of cloth for the wedding tablecloths, when his daughter weeps. After the wedding the quarrel with the dyers is suspended, not gone: the houses begin to "call on each other through the kitchen," and the fathers stay correct and cool.