Seemingly they use their pride
to keep themselves warm. At any rate, whenever Edward Henry talked to
them of radiators, they would sternly reply that a radiator did
not and could not brighten a room. Edward Henry had made the great
discovery that an efficient chandelier will brighten a room better
even than a fire, and he had gilded his radiator. The notion of
gilding the radiator was not his own; he had seen a gilded radiator
in the newest hotel at Birmingham, and had rejoiced as some peculiar
souls rejoice when they meet a fine line in a new poem. (In concession
to popular prejudice Edward Henry had fire-grates in his house, and
fires therein during exceptionally frosty weather; but this did not
save him from being regarded in the Five Towns as in some ways a
peculiar soul.) The effulgent source of dark heat was scientifically
situated in front of the window, and on ordinarily cold evenings
Edward Henry and his wife and mother, and an acquaintance if one
happened to come in, would gather round the radiator and play bridge
or dummy whist.
The other phenomena of the drawing-room which particularly interested
Edward Henry were the Turkey carpet, the four vast easy-chairs, the
sofa, the imposing cigar-cabinet and the mechanical piano-player.
At one brief period he had hovered a good deal about the revolving
bookcase containing the _Encyclopaedia_ (to which his collection
of books was limited), but the frail passion for literature had
not survived a struggle with the seductions of the mechanical
piano-player.
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