in had backed into the station and ejected its passengers,
those two would have covered up their feelings again in an instant.
Such is human nature in the Five Towns.

When Edward Henry withdrew his head into the compartment Brindley and
Mr. Garvin, the latter standing at the corridor door, observed that
his spirits had shot up in the most astonishing manner, and in their
blindness they attributed the phenomenon to Edward Henry's delight in
a temporary freedom from domesticity.

Mr. Garvin had come from the neighbouring compartment, which was
first-class, to suggest a game at bridge. Messieurs Garvin & Quorrall
journeyed to London once a week and sometimes oftener, and, being
traders, they had special season-tickets. They travelled first-class
because their special season-tickets were first-class, Brindley
said that he didn't mind a game, but that he had not the slightest
intention of paying excess fare for the privilege. Mr. Garvin told him
to come along and trust in Messieurs Garvin & Quorrall. Edward Henry,
not nowadays an enthusiastic card-player, enthusiastically agreed to
join the hand, and announced that he did not care if he paid forty
excess fares. Whereupon Robert Brindley grumbled enviously that it was
"all very well for millionaires"!... They followed Mr. Garvin into
the first-class compartment, and it soon appeared that Messrs Garvin
& Quorrall did, in fact, own the train, and that the London and North
Western Railway was no more than their washpot.

"Bring us a cushion from somewhere, will ye?" said Mr. Quorrall,
casually, to a ticket-collector who entered.

And the resplendent official obeyed. The long cushion, rapt from
another compartment, was placed on the knees of the quartette, and the
game began. The ticket-collector examined the tickets of Brindley and
Edward Henry, and somehow failed to notice that they were of the wrong
colour. And at this proof of their influential greatness Messieurs
Garvin & Quorrall were both secretly proud.

The last rubber finished in the neighbourhood of Willesden, and Edward
Henry, having won eighteenpence halfpenny, was exuberantly
content, for Messrs Garvin, Quorrall and Brindley were all renowned
card-players. The cushion was thrown away and a fitful conversation
occupied the few remaining minutes of the journey.

"Where do you put up?" Brindley asked Edward Henry.

"Majestic," said Edward Henry. "Where do you?"

"Oh! Kingsway, I suppose."

The Majestic and