further ceremony he hurried away to join his wife and children at
Bleakridge Station. In such singular manner was I transferred forcibly
from host to host.




II


The doctor and I resembled each other in this: that there was no
offensive affability about either of us. Though abounding in
good-nature, we could not become intimate by a sudden act of volition.
Our conversation was difficult, unnatural, and by gusts falsely
familiar. He displayed to me his bachelor house, his etchings, a few
specimens of modern _rouge flambé_ ware made at Knype, his whisky, his
celebrated prize-winning fox-terrier Titus, the largest collection of
books in the Five Towns, and photographs of Marischal College, Aberdeen.
Then we fell flat, socially prone. Sitting in his study, with Titus
between us on the hearthrug, we knew no more what to say or do. I
regretted that Brindley's wife's grandmother should have been born on a
fifteenth of February. Brindley was a vivacious talker, he could be
trusted to talk. I, too, am a good talker--with another good talker.
With a bad talker I am just a little worse than he is. The doctor said
abruptly after a nerve-trying silence that he had forgotten a most
important call at Hanbridge, and would I care to go with him in the car?
I was and still am convinced that he was simply inventing. He wanted to
break the sinister spell by getting out of the house, and he had not the
face to suggest a sortie into the streets of the Five Towns as a
promenade of pleasure.