how the money was divided between me and
the real solicitor. But they were jealous--there you are! They don't
understand enterprise. They hate it. Nothing ever moves in the Five
Towns. And they've got no manners--I do believe that's the worst. Look
at Lawton's manners! Nothing but a boor! They aren't civilized
yet--that's what's the matter with them! That's what my father used to
say. Barbarians, he used to say. '_Ce sont des barbares!_'... Kids used
to throw stones at him because of his neck-tie. The grown-ups chuck a
brick at anything they don't quite fancy. That's their idea of wit."

Hilda was afraid of his tempestuous mood. But she enjoyed her fear, as
she might have enjoyed exposure to a dangerous storm. She enjoyed the
sensation of her fragility and helplessness there, cooped up with him in
the close intimacy of the compartment. She was glad that he did not
apologize to her for his lack of restraint, nor foolishly pretend that
he was boring her.

"It does seem a shame!" she murmured, her eyes candidly admitting that
she felt enormously flattered.

He sighed and laughed. "How often have I heard my father say that--'_Ce
sont des barbares_!' Peels only brought him over because they could find
nobody in the Five Towns civilized enough to do the work that he did....
I can imagine how he must have felt when he first came here!... My
God!... Environment!... I tell you what--it's only lately I've realized
how I loathe the provinces!"

The little interior in which they were, swept steadily and smoothly
across the central sunlit plain of England, passing canals and brooks
and cottages and churches--silent and stolid in that English stupidity
that he was criticizing. And Hilda saw of George Cannon all that was
French in him. She saw him quite anew, as something rather exotic and
entirely marvellous. She thought: "When I first met him, I said to
myself he was a most extraordinary man. And I was right. I was more
right than I ever imagined. No one down there has any idea of what he
really is. They're too stupid, as he says."

He imposed on her his scorn of the provincial. She had to share it. She
had a vision of the Five Towns as a smoky blotch on the remote
horizon,--negligible, crass, ridiculous in its heavy self-complacency.
The very Orgreaves themselves were tinged with this odious English
provincialism.

He smiled to himself, and then said, very quietly: "It isn't of the
least importance, you know. In fact I'm rat