It was an amiable but deceitful afternoon in the third week of December. Snow fell heavily in thewindows of confectioners' shops, and Father Christmas smiled in Keats's Bazaar the fawning smileof a myth who knows himself to be exploded; but beyond these and similar efforts to remedy theforgetfulness of a careless climate, there was no sign anywhere in the Five Towns, and especially inBursley, of the immediate approach of the season of peace, goodwill, and gluttony on earth.At the Tiger, next door to Keats's in the market-place, Mr. Josiah Topham Curtenty had put downhis glass (the port was kept specially for him), and told his boon companion, Mr. Gordon, that hemust be going. These two men had one powerful sentiment in common: they loved the samewoman. Mr. Curtenty, aged twenty-six in heart, thirty-six in mind, and forty-six in looks, was fifty-sixonly in years. He was a rich man; he had made money as an earthenware manufacturer in the goodold times before Satan was ingenious enough to invent German competition, American tariffs, andthe price of coal; he was still making money with the aid of his son Harry, who now managed theworks, but he never admitted that he was making it. No one has yet succeeded, and no one ever willsucceed, in catching an earthenware manufacturer in the act of making money; he may confess witha sigh that he has performed the feat in the past, he may give utterance to a vague, preposteroushope that he will perform it again in the remote future, but as for surprising him in the very act, youwould as easily surprise a hen laying an egg. Nowadays Mr. Curtenty, commercially secure, spentmost of his energy in helping to shape and control the high destinies of the town. He was DeputyMayor, and Chairman of the General Purposes Committee of the Town Council; he was also aGuardian of the Poor, a Justice of the Peace, President of the Society for the Prosecution of Felons, a sidesman, an Oddfellow, and several other things that meant dining, shrewdness, and good-nature.He was a short, stiff, stout, red-faced man, jolly with the jollity that springs from a kind heart, ahumorous disposition, a perfect digestion, and the respectful deference of one's bank-manager.Without being a member of the Browning Society, he held firmly to the belief that all's right with theworld.Mr. Gordon, who has but a sorry part in the drama, was a younger, quieter, less forceful person, rather shy; a municipal mediocrity, perhaps a little inflated that day by reason of his having beenelected to the Chairmanship of the Gas and Lighting Committee.Both men had sat on their committees at the Town Hall across the way that deceitful afternoon, andwe see them now, after refreshment well earned and consumed, about to separate and sink intoprivate life. But as they came out into the portico of the Tiger, the famous Calypso-like barmaid ofthe Tiger a hovering enchantment in the background, it occurred that a flock of geese weremeditating, as geese will, in the middle of the road. The gooseherd, a shabby middle-aged man, looked as though he had recently lost the Battle of Marathon, and was asking himself whether thepath of his retreat might not lie through the bar-parlour of the Tig