“What have you got in the way of rooms?”

Could the Five Towns have seen him then, as he waited, it would hardly have recognized its “card,” its character, its mirror of aplomb and inventive audacity, in this figure of provincial and plebeian diffidence.

The dandy bowed.

“Do you want a suite, sir?”

“Certainly!” said Edward Henry.  Rather too quickly, rather too defiantly; in fact, rather rudely!  A habitue would not have so savagely hurled back in the dandy’s teeth the insinuation that he wanted only one paltry room.

However, the dandy smiled, accepting with meekness Edward Henry’s sudden arrogance, and consulted a sort of pentateuch that was open in front of him.

No person in the hall saw Edward Henry’s hat fly up into the air and fall back on his head.  But in the imagination of Edward Henry this was what his hat did.

He was saved.  He would have a proud tale for Brindley.  The thing was as simple as the alphabet.  You just walked in and they either fell on your neck or kissed your feet.

Wilkins’s, indeed!

A very handsome footman, not only in white gloves but in white calves, was soon supplicating him to deign to enter a lift.  And when he emerged from the lift another dandy—­in a frock-coat of Paradise—­was awaiting him with obeisances.  Apparently it had not yet occurred to anybody that he was not the younger son of some aged king.

He was prayed to walk into a gorgeous suite, consisting of a corridor, a noble drawing-room (with portrait of His Majesty of Spain on the walls), a large bedroom with two satin-wood beds, a small bedroom and a bathroom, all gleaming with patent devices in porcelain and silver that fully equalled those at home.

Asked if this suite would do, he said it would, trying as well as he could to imply that he had seen better.  Then the dandy produced a note-book and a pencil and impassively waited.  The horrid fact that he was unelect could no longer be concealed.

“E.H.  Machin, Bursley,” he said shortly; and added:  “Alderman Machin.”  After all, why should he be ashamed of being an Alderman?

To his astonishment the dandy smiled very cordially, though always with profound respect.

“Ah! yes!” said the dandy.  It was as though he had said:  “We have long wished for the high patronage of this great reputation.”  Edward Henry could make naught of it.

His opinion of Wilkins’s went down.

He followed the departing dandy up the corridor to the door of the suite in an entirely vain attempt to inquire the price of the suite per day.  Not a syllable would pass his lips.  The dandy bowed and vanished.  Edward Henry stood lost at his own door, and his wandering eye caught sight of a pile of trunks near to another door in the main corridor.  These trunks gave him a terrible shock.  He shut out the rest of the hotel and retired into his private