endearments. She
could afford to do so. The stigma of the geese episode was erased.

But the barmaid of the Tiger, as she let down her bright hair that night
in the attic of the Tiger, said to herself, 'Well, of all the----' Just
that.

* * * * *

THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH

It was Monday afternoon of Bursley Wakes--not our modern rectified
festival, but the wild and naive orgy of seventy years ago, the days of
bear-baiting and of bull-baiting, from which latter phrase, they say,
the town derives its name. In those times there was a town-bull, a sort
of civic beast; and a certain notorious character kept a bear in his
pantry. The 'beating' (baiting) occurred usually on Sunday mornings at
six o'clock, with formidable hungry dogs; and little boys used to look
forward eagerly to the day when they would be old enough to be permitted
to attend. On Sunday afternoons colliers and potters, gathered round the
jawbone of a whale which then stood as a natural curiosity on the waste
space near the corn-mill, would discuss the fray, and make bets for next
Sunday, while the exhausted dogs licked their wounds, or died. During
the Wakes week bull and bear were baited at frequent intervals,
according to popular demand, for thousands of sportsmen from
neighbouring villages seized the opportunity of the fair to witness the
fine beatings for which Bursley was famous throughout the country of the
Five Towns. In that week the Wakes took possession of the town, which
yielded itself with savage abandonment to all the frenzies of license.
The public-houses remained continuously open night and day, and the
barmen and barmaids never went to bed; every inn engaged special
'talent' in order to attract custom, and for a hundred hours the whole
thronged town drank, drank, until the supply of coin of George IV.,
converging gradually into the coffers of a few persons, ceased to
circulate. Towards the end of the Wakes, by way of a last ecstasy, the
cockfighters would carry their birds, which had already fought and been
called off, perhaps, half a dozen times, to the town-field (where the
discreet 40 per cent. brewery now stands), and there match them to a
finish. It was a spacious age.

On this Monday afternoon in June the less fervid activities of the
Wakes were proceeding as usual in the market-place, overshadowed by the
Town Hall--not the present stone structure with its gold angel, but a
brick edifice built on