His wife (for he got one,
and a good one) soon cured him of that.
THE LONG-LOST UNCLE
On a recent visit to the Five Towns I was sitting with my old
schoolmaster, who, by the way, is much younger than I am after all, in
the bow window of a house overlooking that great thoroughfare, Trafalgar
Road, Bursley, when a pretty woman of twenty-eight or so passed down the
street. Now the Five Towns contains more pretty women to the square mile
than any other district in England (and this statement I am prepared to
support by either sword or pistol). But do you suppose that the
frequency of pretty women in Hanbridge, Bursley, Knype, Longshaw and
Turnhill makes them any the less remarked? Not a bit of it. Human nature
is such that even if a man should meet forty pretty women in a walk
along Trafalgar Road from Bursley to Hanbridge, he will remark them all
separately, and feel exactly forty thrills. Consequently my
ever-youthful schoolmaster said to me:
"Good-looking woman that, eh, boy? Married three weeks ago," he added.
A piece of information which took the keen edge off my interest in her.
"Really!" I said.
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