and the price of coal; he was still making money with the aid
of his son Harry, who now managed the works, but he never admitted that
he was making it. No one has yet succeeded, and no one ever will
succeed, in catching an earthenware manufacturer in the act of making
money; he may confess with a sigh that he has performed the feat in the
past, he may give utterance to a vague, preposterous hope that he will
perform it again in the remote future, but as for surprising him in the
very act, you would as easily surprise a hen laying an egg. Nowadays Mr.
Curtenty, commercially secure, spent most of his energy in helping to
shape and control the high destinies of the town. He was Deputy-Mayor,
and Chairman of the General Purposes Committee of the Town Council; he
was also a Guardian of the Poor, a Justice of the Peace, President of
the Society for the Prosecution of Felons, a sidesman, an Oddfellow, and
several other things that meant dining, shrewdness, and good-nature. He
was a short, stiff, stout, red-faced man, jolly with the jollity that
springs from a kind heart, a humorous disposition, a perfect digestion,
and the respectful deference of one's bank-manager. Without being a
member of the Browning Society, he held firmly to the belief that all's
right with the world.

Mr. Gordon, who has but a sorry part in the drama, was a younger,
quieter, less forceful person, rather shy; a municipal mediocrity,
perhaps a little inflated that day by reason of his having been elected
to the Chairmanship of the Gas and Lighting Committee.

Both men had sat on their committees at the Town Hall across the way
that deceitful afternoon, and we see them now, after refreshment well
earned and consumed, about to separate and sink into private life. But
as they came out into the portico of the Tiger, the famous Calypso-like
barmaid of the Tiger a hovering enchantment in the background, it
occurred that a flock of geese were meditating, as geese will, in the
middle of the road. The gooseherd, a shabby middle-aged man, looked as
though he had recently lost the Battle of Marathon, and was asking
himself whether the path of his retreat might not lie through the
bar-parlour of the Tiger.

'Business pretty good?' Mr. Curtenty inquired of him cheerfully.

In the Five Towns business takes the place of weather as a topic of
salutation.

'Business!' echoed the gooseherd.

In that one unassisted noun, scorning the aid of verb, adjective, or
adverb