* * * * *




HIS WORSHIP THE GOOSEDRIVER


I

It was an amiable but deceitful afternoon in the third week of December.
Snow fell heavily in the windows of confectioners' shops, and Father
Christmas smiled in Keats's Bazaar the fawning smile of a myth who knows
himself to be exploded; but beyond these and similar efforts to remedy
the forgetfulness of a careless climate, there was no sign anywhere in
the Five Towns, and especially in Bursley, of the immediate approach of
the season of peace, goodwill, and gluttony on earth.

At the Tiger, next door to Keats's in the market-place, Mr. Josiah
Topham Curtenty had put down his glass (the port was kept specially for
him), and told his boon companion, Mr. Gordon, that he must be going.
These two men had one powerful sentiment in common: they loved the same
woman. Mr. Curtenty, aged twenty-six in heart, thirty-six in mind, and
forty-six in looks, was fifty-six only in years. He was a rich man; he
had made money as an earthenware manufacturer in the good old times
before Satan was ingenious enough to invent German competition, American
tariffs, and the price of coal; he was still making money with the aid
of his son Harry, who now managed the works, but he never admitted that