The train stopped at an incredible station situated in the centre of a rolling desert whose surface consisted of broken pots and cinders.  I expect no one to believe this.

‘Here we are,’ said he blithely.  ‘No, give me the bag.  Porter!’

His summons to the solitary porter was like a clap of thunder.

III

He lived in a low, blackish-crimson heavy-browed house at the corner of a street along which electric cars were continually thundering.  There was a thin cream of mud on the pavements and about two inches of mud in the roadway, rich, nourishing mud like Indian ink half-mixed.  The prospect of carrying a pound or so of that unique mud into a civilized house affrighted me, but Mr Brindley opened his door with his latchkey and entered the abode as unconcernedly as if some fair repentent had cleansed his feet with her tresses.

‘Don’t worry too much about the dirt,’ he said.  ’You’re in Bursley.’

The house seemed much larger inside than out.  A gas-jet burnt in the hall, and sombre portieres gave large mysterious hints of rooms.  I could hear, in the distance, the noise of frizzling over a fire, and of a child crying.  Then a tall, straight, wellmade, energetic woman appeared like a conjuring trick from behind a portiere.

‘How do you do, Mr Loring?’ she greeted me, smiling.  ’So glad to meet you.’

‘My wife,’ Mr Brindley explained gravely.

‘Now, I may as well tell you now, Bob,’ said she, still smiling at me.  ’Bobbie’s got a sore throat and it may be mumps; the chimney’s been on fire and we’re going to be summoned; and you owe me sixpence.’

‘Why do I owe you sixpence?’

‘Because Annie’s had her baby and it’s a girl.’

‘That’s all right.  Supper ready?’

‘Supper is waiting for you.’

She laughed.  ’Whenever I have anything to tell my husband, I always tell him at once!’ she said.  ‘No matter who’s there.’  She pronounced ‘once’ with a wholehearted enthusiasm for its vowel sound that I have never heard equalled elsewhere, and also with a very magnified ‘w’ at the beginning of it.  Often when I hear the word ‘once’ pronounced in less downright parts of the world, I remember how they pronounce it in the Five Towns, and there rises up before me a complete picture of the district, its atmosphere, its spirit.

Mr Brindley led me to a large bathroom that had a faint odour of warm linen.  In addition to a lot of assorted white babyclothes there were millions of towels in that bathroom.  He turned on a tap and the place was instantly full of steam from a jet of boiling water.

‘Now, then,’ he said, ‘you can start.’

As he showed no intention of leaving me, I did start.  ’Mind you don’t scald yourself,’ he warned me, ‘that water’s hot.’  While I was washing, he prepared to wash.  I suddenly felt as if I had been intimate with him and his wife for about ten years.