when
mentioning women employed a peculiar tone. But now the women were
disclosed in bulk, and the display startled George. He suddenly saw all
the city fathers and their sons in a new light.

The bishop had his appointed chair, with a fine feminine hat on either
side of him, but George could not find that any particular chair had
been appointed to himself. Eventually he saw an empty chair in the
middle of a row of men at the right-hand transverse table, and he took
it. He had expected, as the sole artistic creator of the town hall whose
completion the gathering celebrated, to be the object of a great deal of
curiosity at the luncheon. But in this expectation he was deceived. If
any curiosity concerning him existed, it was admirably concealed. The
authorities, however, had not entirely forgotten him, for the Town Clerk
that morning had told him that he must reply to the toast of his health.
He had protested against the shortness of the notice, whereupon the
Town Clerk had said casually that a few words would suffice--anything,
in fact, and had hastened off. George was now getting nervous. He was
afraid of hearing his own voice in that long, low interior which he had
made. He had no desire to eat. He felt tired. Still, his case was less
acute than it would have been had the august personage originally hoped
for attended the luncheon. The august personage had not attended on
account of an objection, apropos of an extreme passage in an election
campaign speech, to the occupant of the mayoral chair (who had thus
failed to be transformed into a Lord Mayor). The whole city had then,
though the Mayor was not over-popular, rallied to its representative,
and the Council had determined that the inauguration should be a purely
municipal affair, a family party, proving to the august and to the world
that the city was self-sufficing. The episode was characteristic.

George heard a concert of laughter, which echoed across the room. At the
end of the main table Mr. Phirrips had become a centre of gaiety. Mr.
Phirrips, whom George and the clerk-of-the-works had had severe and
constant difficulty in keeping reasonably near the narrow path of
rectitude, was a merry, sharp, smart, middle-aged man with a skin that
always looked as if he had just made use of an irritant soap. He was one
of the largest contractors in England, and his name on the hoarding of
any building in course of erection seemed to give distinction to that
building. He wa