out to happen; and that, anyhow, goosedriving was less a crime than a
social solecism, and less a social solecism than a brilliant
eccentricity. Bursley was hurt, and logic is no balm for wounds.

Some may ask: If Bursley was offended, why did it not mark its sense of
Josiah's failure to read the future by electing another Mayor? The
answer is, that while all were agreed that his antic was inexcusable,
all were equally agreed to pretend that it was a mere trifle of no
importance; you cannot deprive a man of his prescriptive right for a
mere trifle of no importance. Besides, nobody could be so foolish as to
imagine that goosedriving, though reprehensible in a Mayor about to
succeed an Earl, is an act of which official notice can be taken.

The most curious thing in the whole imbroglio is that Josiah Curtenty
secretly agreed with his wife and the town. He was ashamed, overset. His
procession of geese appeared to him in an entirely new light, and he had
the strength of mind to admit to himself, 'I've made a fool of myself.'

Harry went to London for a week, and Josiah, under plea of his son's
absence, spent eight hours a day at the works. The brougham remained in
the coach-house.

The Town Council duly met in special conclave, and Josiah Topham
Curtenty became Mayor of Bursley.

Shortly after Christmas it was announced that the Mayor and Mayoress had
decided to give a New Year's treat to four hundred poor old people in
the St. Luke's covered market. It was also spread about that this treat
would eclipse and extinguish all previous treats of a similar nature,
and that it might be accepted as some slight foretaste of the
hospitality which the Mayor and Mayoress would dispense in that
memorable year of royal festival. The treat was to occur on January 9,
the Mayoress's birthday.

On January 7 Josiah happened to go home early. He was proceeding into
the drawing-room without enthusiasm to greet his wife, when he heard
voices within; and one voice was the voice of Gas Gordon.

Jos stood still. It has been mentioned that Gordon and the Mayor were in
love with the same woman. The Mayor had easily captured her under the
very guns of his not formidable rival, and he had always thereafter felt
a kind of benevolent, good-humoured, contemptuous pity for
Gordon--Gordon, whose life was a tragic blank; Gordon, who lived, a
melancholy and defeated bachelor, with his mother and two unmarried
sisters older than himself. That Gordon st