In the Five Towns, and perhaps elsewhere, there exists a custom in virtue of which a couple who have become engaged in the early summer find themselves by a most curious coincidence at the same seaside resort, and often in the same street thereof, during August.  Thus it happened to Denry and to Ruth Earp.  There had been difficulties—­there always are.  A business man who lives by collecting weekly rents obviously cannot go away for an indefinite period.  And a young woman who lives alone in the world is bound to respect public opinion.  However, Ruth arranged that her girlish friend, Nellie Cotterill, who had generous parents, should accompany her.  And the North Staffordshire Railway’s philanthropic scheme of issuing four-shilling tourist return tickets to the seaside enabled Denry to persuade himself that he was not absolutely mad in contemplating a fortnight on the shores of England.

Ruth chose Llandudno, Llandudno being more stylish than either Rhyl or Blackpool, and not dearer.  Ruth and Nellie had a double room in a boarding-house, No. 26 St Asaph’s Road (off the Marine Parade), and Denry had a small single room in another boarding-house, No. 28 St Asaph’s Road.  The ideal could scarcely have been approached more nearly.

Denry had never seen the sea before.  As, in his gayest clothes, he strolled along the esplanade or on the pier between those two girls in their gayest clothes, and mingled with the immense crowd of pleasure-seekers and money-spenders, he was undoubtedly much impressed by the beauty and grandeur of the sea.  But what impressed him far more than the beauty and grandeur of the sea was the field for profitable commercial enterprise which a place like Llandudno presented.  He had not only his first vision of the sea, but his first genuine vision of the possibilities of amassing wealth by honest ingenuity.  On the morning after his arrival he went out for a walk and lost himself near the Great Orme, and had to return hurriedly along the whole length of the Parade about nine o’clock.  And through every ground-floor window of every house he saw a long table full of people eating and drinking the same kinds of food.  In Llandudno fifty thousand souls desired always to perform the same act at the same time; they wanted to be distracted and they would do anything for the sake of distraction, and would pay for the privilege.  And they would all pay at once.

This great thought was more majestic to him than the sea, or the Great Orme, or the Little Orme.

It stuck in his head because he had suddenly grown into a very serious person.  He had now something to live for, something on which to lavish his energy.  He was happy in being affianced, and more proud than happy, and more startled than proud.  The manner and method of his courtship had sharply differed from his previous conception of what such an affair would be.  He had not passed through the sensations which he would have expected to pass through.  And then this question was continually presenting itself:  What could she see in him? She must have got a notion that he was far more wonderful than he really was.  Could it be true that she, his superior in experience and in splendour of person, had kissed him? Him! He felt that it would be his duty to live up to this exaggerated notion which she had of him.  But how?