hadn't a seat to offer me. I
happened to have the evening free. It isn't often I do have a free
evening. And so I thought I'd pop in here. But if Dakins hadn't
introduced me to these gentlemen my seat would have had to be a
standing one."

"So that's how they got to know him, is it?" thought Edward Henry.

And then there was another short silence.

"Hear you've been doing something striking in rubber shares, Machin?"
said Brindley at length.

Astonishing how these things got abroad!

"Oh! very little, very little!" Edward Henry laughed modestly. "Too
late to do much! In another fortnight the bottom will be all out of
the rubber market."

"Of course I'm an Englishman"--Mr. Bryany began.

"Why 'of course'?" Edward Henry interrupted him.

"Hear! Hear! Alderman. Why 'of course'?" said Brindley, approvingly,
and Stirling's rich laugh was heard. "Only it does just happen,"
Brindley added, "that Mr. Bryany did us the honour to be born in the
district."

"Yes! Longshaw," Mr. Bryany admitted, half proud and half apologetic.
"Which I left at the age of two."

"Oh, Longshaw!" murmured Edward Henry with a peculiar inflection.

Longshaw is at the opposite end of the Five Towns from Bursley, and
the majority of the inhabitants of Bursley have never been to Longshaw
in their lives, have only heard of it, as they hear of Chicago or
Bangkok. Edward Henry had often been to Longshaw, but, like every
visitor from Bursley, he instinctively regarded it as a foolish and
unnecessary place.

"As I was saying," resumed Mr. Bryany, quite unintimidated, "I'm an
Englishman. But I've lived eighteen years in America, and it seems
to me the bottom will soon be knocked out of pretty nearly all the
markets in England. Look at the Five Towns!"

"No, don't, Mr. Bryany!" said Brindley. "Don't go to extremes!"

"Personally, I don't mind looking at the Five Towns," said Edward
Henry. "What of it?"

"Well, did you ever see such people for looking twice at a five-pound
note?"

Edward Henry most certainly did not like this aspersion on his native
district. He gazed in silence at Mr. Bryany's brassy and yet simple
face, and did not like the face either.

And Mr. Bryany, beautifully unaware that he had failed in tact,
continued: "The Five Towns is the most English place I've ever seen,
believe me! Of course it has its good points, and England has her
good points; but there's no money stirring. There's no field for
speculation on the spot,