Both men had sat on their committees at the Town Hall across the way that deceitful afternoon, and we see them now, after refreshment well earned and consumed, about to separate and sink into private life.  But as they came out into the portico of the Tiger, the famous Calypso-like barmaid of the Tiger a hovering enchantment in the background, it occurred that a flock of geese were meditating, as geese will, in the middle of the road.  The gooseherd, a shabby middle-aged man, looked as though he had recently lost the Battle of Marathon, and was asking himself whether the path of his retreat might not lie through the bar-parlour of the Tiger.

‘Business pretty good?’ Mr. Curtenty inquired of him cheerfully.

In the Five Towns business takes the place of weather as a topic of salutation.

‘Business!’ echoed the gooseherd.

In that one unassisted noun, scorning the aid of verb, adjective, or adverb, the gooseherd, by a masterpiece of profound and subtle emphasis, contrived to express the fact that he existed in a world of dead illusions, that he had become a convert to Schopenhauer, and that Mr. Curtenty’s inapposite geniality was a final grievance to him.

‘There ain’t no business!’ he added.

‘Ah!’ returned Mr. Curtenty, thoughtful:  such an assertion of the entire absence of business was a reflection upon the town.

‘Sithee!’ said the gooseherd in ruthless accents, ’I druv these ’ere geese into this ‘ere town this morning.’ (Here he exaggerated the number of miles traversed.) ’Twelve geese and two gander—­a Brent and a Barnacle.  And how many is there now?  How many?’

‘Fourteen,’ said Mr. Gordon, having counted; and Mr. Curtenty gazed at him in reproach, for that he, a Town Councillor, had thus mathematically demonstrated the commercial decadence of Bursley.

‘Market overstocked, eh?’ Mr. Curtenty suggested, throwing a side-glance at Callear the poulterer’s close by, which was crammed with everything that flew, swam, or waddled.

‘Call this a market?’ said the gooseherd.  ‘I’st tak’ my lot over to Hanbridge, wheer there is a bit doing, by all accounts.’

Now, Mr. Curtenty had not the least intention of buying those geese, but nothing could be better calculated to straighten the back of a Bursley man than a reference to the mercantile activity of Hanbridge, that Chicago of the Five Towns.

‘How much for the lot?’ he inquired.

In that moment he reflected upon his reputation; he knew that he was a cure, a card, a character; he knew that everyone would think it just like Jos Curtenty, the renowned Deputy-Mayor of Bursley, to stand on the steps of the Tiger and pretend to chaffer with a gooseherd for a flock of geese.  His imagination caught the sound of an oft-repeated inquiry, ’Did ye hear about old Jos’s latest—­trying to buy them there geese?’ and the appreciative laughter that would follow.