So we went forth, splashing warily through the rich mud and the dank
mist of Trafalgar Road, past all those strange little Indian-red houses,
and ragged empty spaces, and poster-hoardings, and rounded kilns, and
high, smoking chimneys, up hill, down hill, and up hill again,
encountering and overtaking many electric trams that dipped and rose
like ships at sea, into Crown Square, the centre of Hanbridge, the
metropolis of the Five Towns. And while the doctor paid his mysterious
call I stared around me at the large shops and the banks and the gilded
hotels. Down the radiating street-vistas I could make out the façades of
halls, theatres, chapels. Trams rumbled continually in and out of the
square. They seemed to enter casually, to hesitate a few moments as if
at a loss, and then to decide with a nonchalant clang of bells that they
might as well go off somewhere else in search of something more
interesting. They were rather like human beings who are condemned to
live for ever in a place of which they are sick beyond the
expressiveness of words.

And indeed the influence of Crown Square, with its large effects of
terra cotta, plate glass, and gold letters, all under a heavy skyscape
of drab smoke, was depressing. A few very seedy men (sharply contrasting
with the fine delicacy of costly things behind plate-glass) stood
doggedly here and there in the mud, immobilized by the gloomy
enchantment of the Square. Two of them turned to look at Stirling's
motor-car and me. They gazed fixedly for a long time, and then one said,
only his lips moving:

"Has Tommy stood thee that there quart o' beer as he promised thee?"

No reply, no response of any sort, for a further long period! Then the