III


Later, catching through the open door fragments of a conversation on
the stairs which indicated that his mother was at last coming down for
tea, he sped like a threatened delinquent into the drawing-room. He
had no wish to encounter his mother, though that woman usually said
little.

The drawing-room, after the bathroom, was Edward Henry's favourite
district in the home. Since he could not spend the whole of his time
in the bathroom--and he could not!--he wisely gave a special care to
the drawing-room, and he loved it as one always loves that upon which
one has bestowed benefits. He was proud of the drawing-room, and he
had the right to be. The principal object in it, at night, was the
electric chandelier, which would have been adequate for a lighthouse.
Edward Henry's eyes were not what they used to be; and the minor
advertisements in the _Signal_--which constituted his sole evening
perusals--often lacked legibility. Edward Henry sincerely believed in
light and heat; he was almost the only person in the Five Towns who
did. In the Five Towns people have fires in their grates--not to warm
the room, but to make the room bright. 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