Stirling's box was not a place where
Edward Henry felt entirely at home. Nevertheless, the two men, having
presented Mr. Bryany, did their best, each in his own way, to make him
feel at home.

"Take this chair, Machin," said Stirling, indicating a chair at the
front.

"Oh! I can't take the front chair!" Edward Henry protested.

"Of course you can, my dear Machin!" said Brindley, sharply. "The
front chair in a stage-box is the one proper seat in the house for
you. Do as your doctor prescribes."

And Edward Henry accordingly sat down at the front, with Mr. Bryany by
his side, and the other two sat behind. But Edward Henry was not quite
comfortable. He faintly resented that speech of Brindley's. And yet he
did feel that what Brindley had said was true, and he was indeed glad
to be in the front chair of a brilliant stage-box on the grand tier,
instead of being packed away in the nethermost twilight of the
Grand Circle. He wondered how Brindley and Stirling had managed to
distinguish his face among the confusion of faces in that distant
obscurity; he, Edward Henry, had failed to notice them, even in the
prominence of their box. But that they had distinguished him showed
how familiar and striking a figure he was. He wondered, too, why they
should have invited him to hob-nob with them. He was not of their
set. Indeed, like many very eminent men, he was not to any degree in
anybody's set. Of one thing he was sure--because he had read it on the
self-conscious faces of all three of them--namely, that they had
been discussing him. Possibly he had been brought up for Mr. Bryany's
inspection as a major lion and character of the district. Well, he did
not mind that; nay, he enjoyed that. He could feel Mr. Bryany covertly
looking him over. And he thought: "Look, my boy! I make no charge." He
smiled and nodded to one or two people who with pride saluted him from
the stalls.... It was meet that he should be visible there on that
Friday night!

"A full house!" he observed, to break the rather awkward silence of
the box, as he glanced round at the magnificent smoke-veiled pageant
of the aristocracy and the democracy of the Five Towns, crowded
together, tier above gilded tier, up to the dim roof where ragged lads
and maids giggled and flirted while waiting for the broken plates to
be cleared away and the moving pictures to begin.

"You may say it!" agreed Mr. Bryany, who spoke with a very slight
American accent. "Dakins positively