“Bring us a cushion from somewhere, will ye?” said Mr. Quorrall, casually, to a ticket-collector who entered.

And the resplendent official obeyed.  The long cushion, rapt from another compartment, was placed on the knees of the quartette, and the game began.  The ticket-collector examined the tickets of Brindley and Edward Henry, and somehow failed to notice that they were of the wrong colour.  And at this proof of their influential greatness Messieurs Garvin & Quorrall were both secretly proud.

The last rubber finished in the neighbourhood of Willesden, and Edward Henry, having won eighteenpence halfpenny, was exuberantly content, for Messrs Garvin, Quorrall and Brindley were all renowned card-players.  The cushion was thrown away and a fitful conversation occupied the few remaining minutes of the journey.

“Where do you put up?” Brindley asked Edward Henry.

“Majestic,” said Edward Henry.  “Where do you?”

“Oh!  Kingsway, I suppose.”

The Majestic and the Kingsway were two of the half-dozen very large and very mediocre hotels in London which, from causes which nobody, and especially no American, has ever been able to discover, are particularly affected by Midland provincials “on the jaunt!” Both had an immense reputation in the Five Towns.

There was nothing new to say about the Majestic and the Kingsway, and the talk flagged until Mr. Quorrall mentioned Seven Sachs.  The mighty Seven Sachs, in his world-famous play, “Overheard,” had taken precedence of all other topics in the Five Towns during the previous week.  He had crammed the theatre and half emptied the Empire Music Hall for six nights; a wonderful feat.  Incidentally, his fifteen hundredth appearance in “Overheard” had taken place in the Five Towns, and the Five Towns had found in this fact a peculiar satisfaction, as though some deep merit had thereby been acquired or rewarded.  Seven Sachs’s tour was now closed, and on the Sunday he had gone to London, en route for America.

“I heard he stops at Wilkins’s,” said Mr. Garvin.

“Wilkins’s your grandmother!” Brindley essayed to crush Mr. Garvin.

“I don’t say he does stop at Wilkins’s,” said Mr. Garvin, an individual not easy to crush; “I only say I heard as he did.”

“They wouldn’t have him!” Brindley insisted firmly.

Mr. Quorrall at any rate seemed tacitly to agree with Brindley.  The august name of Wilkins’s was in its essence so exclusive that vast numbers of fairly canny provincials had never heard of it.  Ask ten well-informed provincials which is the first hotel in London and nine of them would certainly reply, the Grand Babylon.  Not that even wealthy provincials from the industrial districts are in the habit of staying at the Grand Babylon!  No!  Edward Henry, for example, had never stayed at the Grand Babylon, no more than he had ever bought a first-class ticket on a railroad.  The idea of doing so had