though he had recently lost the Battle of Marathon, and was asking
himself whether the path of his retreat might not lie through the
bar-parlour of the Tiger.

'Business pretty good?' Mr. Curtenty inquired of him cheerfully.

In the Five Towns business takes the place of weather as a topic of
salutation.

'Business!' echoed the gooseherd.

In that one unassisted noun, scorning the aid of verb, adjective, or
adverb, the gooseherd, by a masterpiece of profound and subtle emphasis,
contrived to express the fact that he existed in a world of dead
illusions, that he had become a convert to Schopenhauer, and that Mr.
Curtenty's inapposite geniality was a final grievance to him.

'There ain't no business!' he added.

'Ah!' returned Mr. Curtenty, thoughtful: such an assertion of the entire
absence of business was a reflection upon the town.

'Sithee!' said the gooseherd in ruthless accents, 'I druv these 'ere
geese into this 'ere town this morning.' (Here he exaggerated the
number of miles traversed.) 'Twelve geese and two gander--a Brent and a
Barnacle. And how many is there now? How many?'

'Fourteen,' said Mr. Gordon, having counted; and Mr. Curtenty gazed at
him in reproach, for that he, a Town Councillor, had thus mathematically
demonstrated the commercial decadence of Bursley.