Denry said that it was funny without being vulgar. Certainly
it amounted to a continual advertisement for him; an infinitely more
effective advertisement than, for instance, a sandwichman at
eighteen-pence a day, and costing no more, even with the licence and the
shoeing. Moreover, a sandwichman has this inferiority to a turnout: when
you have done with him you cannot put him up to auction and sell him.
Further, there are no sandwichmen in the Five Towns; in that democratic
and independent neighbourhood nobody would deign to be a sandwichman.
The mulish vehicular display does not end the tale of Denry's splendour.
He had an office in St Luke's Square, and in the office was an
office-boy, small but genuine, and a real copying-press, and outside it
was the little square signboard which in the days of his simplicity used
to be screwed on to his mother's door. His mother's steely firmness of
character had driven him into the extravagance of an office. Even after
he had made over a thousand pounds out of the Llandudno lifeboat in less
than three months, she would not listen to a proposal for going into a
slightly larger house, of which one room might serve as an office.
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