‘I—­had an idea,’ I said lamely.  ’He always made out that one of those two sisters was so much to him, and I knew it couldn’t be Mrs Colclough.’

‘Well,’ she said, ’ask anybody down here, any-body!  And see what they’ll say.’

‘No,’ Mr Brindley put in, ’don’t go about asking any-body.  You might get yourself disliked.  But you may take it it isn’t true.’

‘Most certainly,’ his wife concurred with seriousness.

‘We reckon to know something about Simon Fuge down here,’ Mr Brindley added.  ‘Also about the famous Annie.’

‘He must have flirted with her a good bit, anyhow,’ I said.

‘Oh, Flirt!’ ejaculated Mr Brindley.

I had a sudden dazzling vision of the great truth that the people of the Five Towns have no particular use for half-measures in any department of life.  So I accepted the final judgement with meekness.

IX

I returned to London that evening, my work done, and the muncipality happily flattered by my judgement of the slip-decorated dishes.  Mr Brindley had found time to meet me at the midday meal, and he had left his office earlier than usual in order to help me to drink his wife’s afternoon tea.  About an hour later he picked up my little bag, and said that he should accompany me to the little station in the midst of the desert of cinders and broken crockery, and even see me as far as Knype, where I had to take the London express.  No, there are no half-measures in the Five Towns.  Mrs Brindley stood on her doorstep, with her eldest infant on her shoulders, and waved us off.  The infant cried, expressing his own and his mother’s grief at losing a guest.  It seems as if people are born hospitable in the Five Towns.

We had not walked more than a hundred yards up the road when a motor-car thundered down upon us from the opposite direction.  It was Mr Colclough’s, and Mr Colclough was driving it.  Mr Brindley stopped his friend with the authoritative gesture of a policeman.

‘Where are you going, Ol?’

‘Home, lad.  Sorry you’re leaving us so soon, Mr Loring.’

‘You’re mistaken, my boy,’ said Mr Brindley.  ’You’re just going to run us down to Knype station, first.’

‘I must look slippy, then,’ said Mr Colclough.

‘You can look as slippy as you like,’ said Mr Brindley.

In another fifteen seconds we were in the car, and it had turned round, and was speeding towards Knype.  A feverish journey!  We passed electric cars every minute, and for three miles were continually twisting round the tails of ponderous, creaking, and excessively deliberate carts that dropped a trail of small coal, or huge barrels on wheels that dripped something like the finest Devonshire cream, or brewer’s drays that left nothing behind them save a luscious odour of malt.  It was a breathless slither over unctuous black mud through a long winding canon of brown-red houses and shops, with a glimpse here and there of a grey-green park, a canal, or a football field.