A writer, not yet deceased, who spent two nights there, and wrote
four hundred pages about it, has committed herself to the
assertion that there are no private carriages in its streets--
only perambulators and tramcars.
That writer's reputation is ruined in the Five Towns. For the Five
Towns, although continually complaining of bad times, is immensely
wealthy, as well as immensely poor--a country of contrasts,
indeed--and private carriages, if they do not abound, exist at any
rate in sufficient numbers.
Nay, more, automobiles of the most expensive French and English
makes fly dashingly along its hilly roads and scatter in profusion
the rich black mud thereof.
On a Saturday afternoon in last spring, such an automobile stood
outside the garden entrance of Bleakridge House, just halfway
between Hanbridge and Bursley. It belonged to young Harold Etches,
of Etches, Limited, the great porcelain manufacturers.
It was a 20 h.p. Panhard, and was worth over a thousand pounds as
it stood there, throbbing, and Harold was proud of it.
He was also proud of his young wife, Maud, who, clad in several
hundred pounds' worth of furs, had taken her seat next to the
steering-wheel, and was waiting for Harold to mount by her side.
The united ages of this handsome and gay couple came to less than
forty-five.
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