ud of such an inventive
miser.

Once Mrs Garlick, before what she called her dinner, asked Maria, "Will
there be enough mutton for to-morrow?" And Maria had gloomily and firmly
said, "No." "Will there be enough if I don't have any to-day?" pursued
Mrs Garlick. And Maria had said, "Yes." "I won't have any then," said
Mrs Garlick. Maria was offended; there are some things that a servant
will not stand. She informed Mrs Garlick that if Mrs Garlick meant "to
go on going on like that" she should leave; she wouldn't stay in such a
house. In vain Mrs Garlick protested that the less she ate the better
she felt; in vain she referred to her notorious indigestion. "Either you
eats your dinner, mum, or out I clears!" Mrs Garlick offered her a rise
of L1 a year to stay. She was already, because she would stop and most
servants wouldn't, receiving L18, a high wage. She refused the
increment. Pushed by her passion for economy in mutton, Mrs Garlick then
offered her a rise of L2 a year. Maria accepted, and Mrs Garlick went
without mutton. Persons unacquainted with the psychology of
parsimoniousness may hesitate to credit this incident. But more advanced
students of humanity will believe it without difficulty. In the Five
Towns it is known to be true.

II

The supreme crisis, to which the foregoing is a mere prelude, in the
affairs of Mrs Garlick and Maria, was occasioned by the extraordinary
performances of the Mayor of Bursley. This particular mayor was invested
with the chain almost immediately upon the conclusion of a great series
of revival services in which he had conspicuously figured. He had an
earthenware manufactory half-way up the hill between Bursley and its
loftiest suburb, Toft End, and the smoke of his chimneys and kilns was
generally blown by a favourable wind against the windows of Mrs
Garlick's house, which stood by itself. Mrs Garlick made nothing of
this. In the Five Towns they think no more of smoke than the world at
large used to think of small-pox. The smoke plague is exactly as
curable as the small-pox plague. It continues to flourish, not because
smokiness is cheaper than cleanliness--it is dearer--but because a
greater nuisance than smoke is the nuisance of a change, and because
human nature in general is rather like Mrs Garlick: its notion of
economy is to pay heavily for the privilege of depriving itself of
something--mutton or cleanliness.

However, this mayor was different. He had emerged from the