the American and Colonial buyer.  They had an extremely bad reputation for cutting prices.  They were hated by every other firm in the Five Towns, and, to hear rival manufacturers talk, one would gather the impression that Sir Jee had acquired a tremendous fortune by systematically selling goods under cost.  They were also hated by between eighteen and nineteen hundred employees.  But such hatred, however virulent, had not marred the progress of Sir Jee’s career.

He had meant to make a name and he had made it.  The Five Towns might laugh at his vulgar snobbishness.  The Five Towns might sneer at his calculated philanthropy.  But he was, nevertheless, the best-known man in the Five Towns, and it was precisely his snobbishness and his philanthropy which had carried him to the top.  Moreover, he had been the first public man in the Five Towns to gain a knighthood.  The Five Towns could not deny that it was very proud indeed of this knighthood.  The means by which he had won this distinction were neither here nor there—­he had won it.  And was he not the father of his native borough?  Had he not been three times mayor of his native borough?  Was not the whole northern half of the county dotted and spangled by his benefactions, his institutions, his endowments?

And it could not be denied that he sometimes tickled the Five Towns as the Five Towns likes being tickled.  There was, for example, the notorious Sneyd incident.  Sneyd Hall, belonging to the Earl of Chell, lies a few miles south of the Five Towns, and from it the pretty Countess of Chell exercises that condescending meddlesomeness which so frequently exasperates the Five Towns.  Sir Jee had got his title by the aid of the Countess-’Interfering Iris’, as she is locally dubbed.  Shortly afterwards he had contrived to quarrel with the Countess; and the quarrel was conducted by Sir Jee as a quarrel between equals, which delighted the district.  Sir Jee’s final word in it had been to buy a sizable tract of land near Sneyd village, just off the Sneyd estate, and to erect thereon a mansion quite as imposing as Sneyd Hall, and far more up to date, and to call the mansion Sneyd Castle.  A mighty stroke!  Iris was furious; the Earl speechless with fury.  But they could do nothing.  Naturally the Five Towns was tickled.

It was apropos of the house-warming of Sneyd Castle, also of the completion of his third mayoralty, and of the inauguration of the Dain Technical Institute, that the movement had been started (primarily by a few toadies) for tendering to Sir Jee a popular gift worthy to express the profound esteem in which he was officially held in the Five Towns.  It having been generally felt that the gift should take the form of a portrait, a local dilettante had suggested Cressage, and when the Five Towns had inquired into Cressage and discovered that that genius from the United States was celebrated throughout the civilized world, and regarded as the equal of Velazquez (whoever Velazquez might be), and that he had painted half the aristocracy, and that his income was regal, the suggestion was accepted and Cressage was approached.