I say she was extraordinarily happy; and yet she was unhappy too.  In a word, she resembled all the rest of us—­she had “somehow expected something different” from what life actually gave her.  She was astonished that her William Henry seemed to be so content with things as they were.  Far, now, from any apprehension of his extravagance, she wished secretly that he would be a little more dashing.  He did not seem to feel the truth that, though prudence is all very well, you can only live your life once, and that when you are dead you are dead.  He did not seem to understand the value of pleasure.  Few people in the Five Towns did seem to understand the value of pleasure.  He had no distractions except his pipe.  Existence was a harsh and industrious struggle, a series of undisturbed daily habits.  No change, no gaiety, no freak!  Grim, changeless monotony!

And once, in July, William Henry abandoned even his pipe for ten days.  Work, and therefore pay, had been irregular, but that was not in itself a reason sufficient for cutting off a luxury that cost only a shilling a week.  It was the Going Away Club that swallowed up the tobacco money.  Nothing would induce William Henry to get into arrears with his payments to that mysterious Club.  He would have sacrificed not merely his pipe, but his dinner—­nay, he would have sacrificed his wife’s dinner—­to the greedy maw of that Club.  Annie hated the Club nearly as passionately as she loved William Henry.

Then on the first of August (a Tuesday) William Henry came into the house and put down twenty sovereigns in a row on the kitchen table.  He did not say much, being (to Annie’s mild regret) of a secretive disposition.

Annie had never seen so much money in a row before.

“What’s that?” she said weakly.

“That?” said William Henry.  “That’s th’ going away money.”

II

A flat barrow at the door, a tin trunk and two bags on the barrow, and a somewhat ragged boy between the handles of the barrow!  The curtains removed from the windows, and the blinds drawn!  A double turn of the key in the portal!  And away they went, the ragged boy having previously spit on his hands in order to get a grip of the barrow.  Thus they arrived at Hanbridge Railway Station, which was a tempest of traffic that Saturday before Bank Holiday.  The whole of the Five Towns appeared to be going away.  The first thing that startled Annie was that William Henry gave the ragged boy a shilling, quite as much as the youth could have earned in a couple of days in a regular occupation.  William Henry was also lavish with a porter.  When they arrived, after a journey of ten minutes, at Knype, where they had to change for Liverpool, he was again lavish with a porter.  And the same thing happened at Crewe, where they had to change once more for Liverpool.  They had time at Crewe for an expensive coloured drink.  On the long seething platform William Henry gave Annie all his money to keep.