Said Mr. Bryany:
"'Merica's the place for hotels."
"Yes, I expect it is."
"Been to Chicago?"
"No, I haven't."
Mr. Bryany, as he removed his overcoat, could be seen politely
forbearing to raise his eyebrows.
"Of course you've been to New York?"
Edward Henry would have given all he had in his pockets to be able to
say that he had been to New York. But by some inexplicable negligence
he had hitherto omitted to go to New York, and being a truthful person
(except in the gravest crises) he was obliged to answer miserably:
"No, I haven't."
Mr. Bryany gazed at him with amazement and compassion, apparently
staggered by the discovery that there existed in England a man of
the world who had contrived to struggle on for forty years without
perfecting his education by a visit to New York.
Edward Henry could not tolerate Mr. Bryany's look. It was a look
which he had never been able to tolerate on the features of anybody
whatsoever. He reminded himself that his secret object in accompanying
Mr. Bryany to the Turk's Head was to repay Mr. Bryany--in what coin he
knew not yet--for the aspersions which at the music-hall he had cast
upon England in general and upon the Five Towns in particular, and
also to get revenge for having been tricked into believing, even for a
moment, that there was really a case of hydrophobia at Bleakridge.
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