off to bed,' Mr Brindley whispered
kindly.

So we left the Wedgwood Institution. I began to talk to Mr Brindley
about music. The barbaric attitude of the Five Towns towards great
music was the theme of some very lively animadversions on his part.

VI

The Tiger was very conveniently close to the Wedgwood Institution. The
Tiger had a 'yard', one of those long, shapeless expanses of the
planet, partly paved with uneven cobbles and partly unsophisticated
planet, without which no provincial hotel can call itself respectable.
We came into it from the hinterland through a wooden doorway in a brick
wall. Far off I could see one light burning. We were in the centre of
Bursley, the gold angel of its Town Hall rose handsomely over the roof
of the hotel in the diffused moonlight, but we might have been in the
purlieus of some dubious establishment on the confines of a great
seaport, where anything may happen. The yard was so deserted, so
mysterious, so shut in, so silent, that, really, infamous characters
ought to have rushed out at us from the obscurity of shadows, and
felled us to the earth with no other attendant phenomenon than a low
groan. There are places where one seems to feel how thin and brittle is
the crust of law and order. Why one should be conscious of this in the
precincts of such a house as the Tiger, which I was given to understand
is as respectable as the parish church, I do not know. But I have
experienced a similar feeling in the yards of other provincial hotels
that were also as correct as parish churches. We passed a dim fly, with
its shafts slanting forlornly to the ground, and a wheelbarrow. Both
looked as though they had been abandoned for ever. Then we came to the
lamp, which illuminated a door, and on the door was a notice: 'Private
Bar. Billiards.'

I am not a frequenter of convivial haunts. I should not dare to
penetrate alone into a private bar; when I do enter a private bar it is
invariably under the august protection of an habitue, and it is
invariably with the idea that at last I am going to see life. Often has
this illusion been shattered, but each time it perfectly renewed
itself. So I followed the bold Mr Brindley into the private bar of the
Tiger.

It was a small and low room. I instinctively stooped, though there was
no necessity for me to stoop. The bar had no peculiarity. It can be
described in a breath: Three perpendicular planes. Back plane, bottles
arranged exactly like bo