“Yes,” said Mrs Brindley to her husband, after reflection.  “And a fine old crowd there’ll be in the train—­with this football match!”

“Can’t be helped!...  Now, you kids, hook it upstairs to nurse.”

“And what about you?” asked Mrs Brindley.

“You must tell the old lady I’m kept by business.”

“I told her that last year, and you know what happened.”

“Well,” said Brindley.  “Here Loring’s just come.  You don’t expect me to leave him, do you?  Or have you had the beautiful idea of taking him over to Axe to pass a pleasant Saturday afternoon with your esteemed grandmother?”

“No,” said Mrs Brindley.  “Hardly that!”

“Well, then?”

The boys, having first revolved on their axes, slid down from their high chairs as though from horses.

“Look here,” I said.  “You mustn’t mind me.  I shall be all right.”

“Ha-ha!” shouted Brindley.  “I seem to see you turned loose alone in this amusing town on a winter afternoon.  I seem to see you!”

“I could stop in and read,” I said, eyeing the multitudinous books on every wall of the dining-room.  The house was dadoed throughout with books.

“Rot!” said Brindley.

This was only my third visit to his home and to the Five Towns, but he and I had already become curiously intimate.  My first two visits had been occasioned by official pilgrimages as a British Museum expert in ceramics.  The third was for a purely friendly week-end, and had no pretext.  The fact is, I was drawn to the astonishing district and its astonishing inhabitants.  The Five Towns, to me, was like the East to those who have smelt the East:  it “called.”

“I’ll tell you what we could do,” said Mrs Brindley.  “We could put him on to Dr Stirling.”

“So we could!” Brindley agreed.  “Wife, this is one of your bright, intelligent days.  We’ll put you on to the doctor, Loring.  I’ll impress on him that he must keep you constantly amused till I get back, which I fear it won’t be early.  This is what we call manners, you know—­to invite a fellow-creature to travel a hundred and fifty miles to spend two days here, and then to turn him out before he’s been in the house an hour.  It’s us, that is!  But the truth of the matter is, the birthday business might be a bit serious.  It might easily cost me fifty quid and no end of diplomacy.  If you were a married man you’d know that the ten plagues of Egypt are simply nothing in comparison with your wife’s relations.  And she’s over eighty, the old lady.”

“I’ll give you ten plagues of Egypt!” Mrs Brindley menaced her spouse, as she wafted the boys from the room.  “Mr Loring, do take some more of that cheese if you fancy it.”  She vanished.

Within ten minutes Brindley was conducting me to the doctor’s, whose house was on the way to the station.  In its spacious porch he explained the circumstances in six words, depositing me like a parcel.  The doctor, who had once by mysterious medicaments saved my frail organism from the consequences of one of Brindley’s Falstaffian “nights,” hospitably protested his readiness to sacrifice patients to my pleasure.