slow stolidity. Bursley had become a museum to him; he entered it as he
might have entered the Middle Ages, and was astonished to find that
beautiful which once he had deemed sordid and commonplace. Some of the
streets seemed like a monument of the past, a picturesque survival; the
crate-floats, drawn by swift shaggy ponies and driven by men who
balanced themselves erect on two thin boards while flying round corners,
struck him as the quaintest thing in the world.

'And what's going on nowadays in old Bosley, Miss Myatt?' he asked
expansively, trying to drop his American accent and use the dialect.

'Eh, bless us!' exclaimed Hannah, startled. 'Nothing ever happens here,
Mr. Arthur.'

He felt that nothing did happen there.

'Same here as elsewhere,' said Meshach. 'People living, and getting
childer to worry 'em, and dying. Nothing'll cure 'em of it seemingly. Is
there anything different to that in New York? Or can they do without
cemeteries?'

Twemlow laughed, and again he had the illusion of having come back to
reality after a long, hurried dream. 'Nothing seems to have changed
here,' he remarked idly.

'Nothing changed!' said Meshach. 'Nay, nay! We're up in the world. We've
got the steam-car. And we've got public baths. We wash oursen nowadays.
And there's talk of a park, and a pond with a duck on it. We're moving
with the times, my lad, and so's the rates.'