The car passed everything on the road; it seemed to be overtaking electric trams all the time.

‘So ye’n been married a year?’ said Uncle Dan, smiling at Maud.

‘Oh yes; a year and three days.  We’re quite used to it.’

‘Us’n be in h-ll in a minute, wench!’ exclaimed Dan, calmly changing the topic, as Harold swung the car within an inch of a brewer’s dray, and skidded slightly in the process.  No anti-skidding device would operate in that generous, oozy mud.

And, as a matter of fact, they were in Hanbridge the next minute—­ Hanbridge, the centre of the religions, the pleasures, and the vices of the Five Towns.

‘Bless us!’ said the old man.  ’It’s fifteen year and more since I were here.’

‘Harold,’ said Maud, ’let’s stop at the Piccadilly Cafe and have some tea.’

‘Cafe?’ asked Dan.  ‘What be that?’

‘It’s a kind of a pub.’  Harold threw the explanation over his shoulder as he brought the car up with swift dexterity in front of the Misses Callear’s newly opened afternoon tea-rooms.

‘Oh, well, if it’s a pub,’ said Uncle Dan, ‘I dunna’ object.’

He frankly admitted, on entering, that he had never before seen a pub full of little tables and white cloths, and flowers, and young women, and silver teapots, and cake-stands.  And though he did pour his tea into his saucer, he was sufficiently at home there to address the younger Miss Callear as ‘young woman’, and to inform her that her beverage was lacking in Orange Pekoe.  And the Misses Callear, who conferred a favour on their customers in serving them, didn’t like it.

He became reminiscent.

‘Aye!’ he said, ‘when I left th’ Five Towns fifty-two years sin’ to go weaving i’ Derbyshire wi’ my mother’s brother, tay were ten shilling a pun’.  Us had it when us were sick—­which wasna’ often.  We worked too hard for be sick.  Hafe past five i’ th’ morning till eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week’s work on ye’ back, and home again wi’ th’ brass.

‘They’ve lost th’ habit of work now-a-days, seemingly,’ he went on, as the car moved off once more, but slowly, because of the vast crowds emerging from the Knype football ground.  ’It’s football, Saturday; bands of a Sunday; football, Monday; ill i’ bed and getting round, Tuesday; do a bit o’ work Wednesday; football, Thursday; draw wages Friday night; and football, Saturday.  And wages higher than ever.  It’s that as beats me—­ wages higher than ever—­

‘Ye canna’ smoke with any comfort i’ these cars,’ he added, when Harold had got clear of the crowds and was letting out.  He regretfully put his pipe in his pocket.

Harold skirted the whole length of the Five Towns from south to north, at an average rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour; and quite soon the party found itself on the outer side of Turnhill, and descending the terrible Clough Bank, three miles long, and of a steepness resembling the steepness of the side of a house.