e we share a sitting-room."

Edward Henry agreed lightly:

"I suppose so."

But the fact was that he was much impressed. He himself had never
taken a private sitting-room in any hotel. He had sometimes felt the
desire, but he had not had the "face"--as they say down there--to do
it. To take a private sitting-room in a hotel was generally regarded
in the Five Towns as the very summit of dashing expensiveness and
futile luxury.

"I didn't know they had any private sitting-rooms in this shanty,"
said Edward Henry.

Mr. Bryany, having finished with the fire, fronted him, shovel in
hand, with a remarkable air of consummate wisdom, and replied:

"You can generally get what you want, if you insist on having it, even
in this 'shanty.'"

Edward Henry regretted his use of the word "shanty." Inhabitants of
the Five Towns may allow themselves to twit the historic and excellent
Turk's Head, but they do not extend the privilege to strangers. And in
justice to the Turk's Head it is to be clearly stated that it did no
more to cow and discourage travellers than any other provincial hotel
in England. It was a sound and serious English provincial hotel, and
it linked century to century.

Said Mr. Bryany:

"'Merica's the place for hotels."

"Yes, I expect it is."

"Been to Chicago?"

"No, I haven't."

Mr. Bryany, as he removed his overcoat, could be seen politely
forbearing to raise his eyebrows.

"Of course you've been to New York?"

Edward Henry would have given all he had in his pockets to be able to
say that he had been to New York. But by some inexplicable negligence
he had hitherto omitted to go to New York, and being a truthful person
(except in the gravest crises) he was obliged to answer miserably:

"No, I haven't."

Mr. Bryany gazed at him with amazement and compassion, apparently
staggered by the discovery that there existed in England a man of
the world who had contrived to struggle on for forty years without
perfecting his education by a visit to New York.

Edward Henry could not tolerate Mr. Bryany's look. It was a look
which he had never been able to tolerate on the features of anybody
whatsoever. He reminded himself that his secret object in accompanying
Mr. Bryany to the Turk's Head was to repay Mr. Bryany--in what coin he
knew not yet--for the aspersions which at the music-hall he had cast
upon England in general and upon the Five Towns in particular, and
also to get revenge for having been trick