h Mr.
Duncalf had forecast; it also stated, on authority, that Mr. Josiah
Curtenty would wear the mayoral chain of Bursley immediately, and added
as its own private opinion that, in default of the Right Honourable the
Earl of Chell and his Countess, no better 'civic heads' could have been
found than Mr. Curtenty and his charming wife. So far the tone of the
_Signal_ was unimpeachable. But underneath all this was a sub-title,
'Amusing Exploit of the Mayor-elect,' followed by an amusing description
of the procession of the geese, a description which concluded by
referring to Mr. Curtenty as His Worship the Goosedriver.

Hanbridge, Knype, Longshaw, and Turnhill laughed heartily, and perhaps a
little viciously, at this paragraph, but Bursley was annoyed by it. In
print the affair did not look at all well. Bursley prided itself on
possessing a unique dignity as the 'Mother of the Five Towns,' and to be
presided over by a goosedriver, however humorous and hospitable he might
be, did not consort with that dignity. A certain Mayor of Longshaw,
years before, had driven a sow to market, and derived a tremendous
advertisement therefrom, but Bursley had no wish to rival Longshaw in
any particular. Bursley regarded Longshaw as the Inferno of the Five
Towns. In Bursley you were bidden to go to Longshaw as you were bidden
to go to ... Certain acute people in Hillport saw nothing but a
paralyzing insult in the opinion of the _Signal_ (first and foremost a
Hanbridge organ), that Bursley could find no better civic head than
Josiah Curtenty. At least three Aldermen and seven Councillors
privately, and in the Tiger, disagreed with any such view of Bursley's
capacity to find heads.

And underneath all this brooding dissatisfaction lurked the thought, as
the alligator lurks in a muddy river, that 'the Earl wouldn't like
it'--meaning the geese episode. It was generally felt that the Earl had
been badly treated by Jos Curtenty. The town could not explain its
sentiments--could not argue about them. They were not, in fact, capable
of logical justification; but they were there, they violently existed.
It would have been useless to point out that if the inimitable Jos had
not been called to the mayoralty the episode of the geese would have
passed as a gorgeous joke; that everyone had been vastly amused by it
until that desolating issue of the _Signal_ announced the Earl's
retirement; that Jos Curtenty could not possibly have foreseen what was
ab