On the seventh day they set sail.  The dream was not quite over, but it was nearly over.  On the ship, when the porter had been discharged, she had two and twopence, and William Henry had the return tickets.  Still, this poverty did not prevent William Henry from sitting down and ordering a fine lunch for two (the sea being again smooth).  Having ordered it, he calmly told his wife that he had a sovereign in his waistcoat pocket.  A sovereign was endless riches.  But it came to an end during a long wait for the Five Towns train at Crewe.  William Henry had apparently decided to finish the holiday as he had begun it.  And the two and twopence also came to an end, as William Henry, suddenly remembering the children of his brother, was determined to buy gifts for them on Crewe platform.  At Hanbridge man and wife had sixpence between them.  And the boy with the barrow, who had been summoned by a postcard, was not visible.  However, a cab was visible.  William Henry took that cab.

“But, Will—­”

“Shut up, lass!” he stopped her.

They plunged into the smoke and squalor of the Five Towns, and reached Birches Street with pomp, while Annie wondered how William Henry would contrive to get credit from a cabman.  The entire street would certainly gather round if there should be a scene.

“Just help us in with this trunk, wilt?” said William Henry to the cabman.  This, with sixpence in his pocket!

Then turning to his wife, he whispered: 

“Lass, look under th’ clock on th’ mantelpiece in th’ parlour.  Ye’ll find six bob.”

He explained to her later that prudent members of Going Away Clubs always left money concealed behind them, as this was the sole way of providing against a calamitous return.  The pair existed on the remainder of the six shillings and on credit for a week.  William Henry became his hard self again.  The prison life was resumed.  But Annie did not mind, for she had lived for a week at the rate of a thousand a year.  And in a fortnight William Henry began grimly to pay his subscriptions to the next year’s Going Away Club.

THREE EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF MR COWLISHAW, DENTIST

I

They all happened on the same day.  And that day was a Saturday, the red Saturday on which, in the unforgettable football match between Tottenham Hotspur and the Hanbridge F.C. (formed regardless of expense in the matter of professionals to take the place of the bankrupt Knype F.C.), the referee would certainly have been murdered had not a Five Towns crowd observed its usual miraculous self-restraint.

Mr Cowlishaw—­aged twenty-four, a fair-haired bachelor with a weak moustache—­had bought the practice of the retired Mr Rapper, a dentist of the very old school.  He was not a native of the Five Towns.  He came from St Albans, and had done the deal through an advertisement in the Dentists’ Guardian, a weekly journal full of exciting interest to dentists.  Save such knowledge as he had gained during two preliminary visits to the centre of the world’s earthenware manufacture, he knew nothing of the Five Towns; practically, he had everything to learn.  And one may say that the Five Towns is not a subject that can be “got up” in a day.