After a pause Nellie asked suddenly: 

“Who’ll be mayor—­now?”

“Well,” said Denry, “his Worship Councillor Barlow, J.P., will be extremely cross if he isn’t.”

“How horrid!” said Nellie, frankly.  “And he’s got nobody at all to be mayoress.”

“Mrs Prettyman would be mayoress,” said Denry.  “When there’s no wife or daughter, it’s always a sister if there is one.”

“But can you imagine Mrs Prettyman as mayoress?  Why, they say she scrubs her own doorstep—­after dark.  They ought to make you mayor.”

“Do you fancy yourself as mayoress?” he inquired.

“I should be better than Mrs Prettyman, anyhow.”

“I believe you’d make an A1 mayoress,” said Denry.

“I should be frightfully nervous,” she confidentially admitted.

“I doubt it,” said he.

The fact was, that since her return to Bursley from the honeymoon, Nellie was an altered woman.  She had acquired, as it were in a day, to an astonishing extent, what in the Five Towns is called “a nerve.”

“I should like to try it,” said she.

“One day you’ll have to try it, whether you want to or not.”

“When will that be?”

“Don’t know.  Might be next year but one.  Old Barlow’s pretty certain to be chosen for next November.  It’s looked on as his turn next.  I know there’s been a good bit of talk about me for the year after Barlow.  Of course, Bloor’s death will advance everything by a year.  But even if I come next after Barlow it’ll be too late.”

“Too late?  Too late for what?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Denry.  “I wanted to be the youngest mayor that Bursley’s ever had.  It was only a kind of notion I had a long time ago.  I’d given it up, because I knew there was no chance unless I came before Bloor, which of course I couldn’t do.  Now he’s dead.  If I could upset old Barlow’s apple-cart I should just be the youngest mayor by the skin of my teeth.  Huskinson, the mayor in 1884, was aged thirty-four and six months.  I’ve looked it all up this afternoon.”

“How lovely if you could be the youngest mayor!”

“Yes.  I’ll tell you how I feel.  I feel as though I didn’t want to be mayor at all if I can’t be the youngest mayor... you know.”

She knew.

“Oh!” she cried, “do upset Mr Barlow’s apple-cart.  He’s a horrid old thing.  Should I be the youngest mayoress?”

“Not by chalks,” said he.  “Huskinson’s sister was only sixteen.”

“But that’s only playing at being mayoress!” Nellie protested.  “Anyhow, I do think you might be youngest mayor.  Who settles it?”

“The Council, of course.”

“Nobody likes Councillor Barlow.”

“He’ll be still less liked when he’s wound up the Bursley Football Club.”

“Well, urge him on to wind it up, then.  But I don’t see what football has got to do with being mayor.”