"You mustn't mind me. I shall be all right."

"Ha-ha!" shouted Brindley. "I seem to see you turned loose alone in this
amusing town on a winter afternoon. I seem to see you!"

"I could stop in and read," I said, eyeing the multitudinous books on
every wall of the dining-room. The house was dadoed throughout with
books.

"Rot!" said Brindley.

This was only my third visit to his home and to the Five Towns, but he
and I had already become curiously intimate. My first two visits had
been occasioned by official pilgrimages as a British Museum expert in
ceramics. The third was for a purely friendly week-end, and had no
pretext. The fact is, I was drawn to the astonishing district and its
astonishing inhabitants. The Five Towns, to me, was like the East to
those who have smelt the East: it "called."

"I'll tell you what we _could_ do," said Mrs Brindley. "We could put him
on to Dr Stirling."

"So we could!" Brindley agreed. "Wife, this is one of your bright,
intelligent days. We'll put you on to the doctor, Loring. I'll impress
on him that he must keep you constantly amused till I get back, which I
fear it won't be early. This is what we call manners, you know--to
invite a fellow-creature to travel a hundred and fifty miles to spend
two days here, and then to turn him out before he's been in the house an
hour. It's _us_, that is! But the truth of the matter is, the birthday
business might be a bit serious. It might easily cost me fifty quid and
no end of diplomacy. If you were a married man you'd know that the ten
plagues of Egypt are simply nothing in comparison with your wife's
relations. And she's over eighty, the old lady."

"_I_'ll give you ten plagues of Egypt!" Mrs Brindley menaced her spouse,
as she wafted the boys from the room. "Mr Loring, do take some more of
that cheese if you fancy it." She vanished.

Within ten minutes Brindley was conducting me to the doctor's, whose
house was on the way to the station. In its spacious porch he explained
the circumstances in six words, depositing me like a parcel. The doctor,
who had once by mysterious medicaments saved my frail organism from the
consequences of one of Brindley's Falstaffian "nights," hospitably
protested his readiness to sacrifice patients to my pleasure.

"It'll be a chance for MacIlroy," said he.

"Who's MacIlroy?" I asked.

"MacIlroy is another Scotchman," growled Brindley. "Extraordinary how
they stick together! When he wanted an assistant, d