But he had been so
accustomed to free advertisements of one sort or another that the notion
of paying for one was loathsome to him. Then it was that he thought of
the Countess of Chell, who happened to be staying at Knype. If he could
obtain that great aristocrat, that ex-Mayoress, that lovely witch, that
benefactor of the district, to honour his Thrift Club as patroness,
success was certain. Everybody in the Five Towns sneered at the Countess
and called her a busybody; she was even dubbed "Interfering Iris" (Iris
being one of her eleven Christian names); the Five Towns was fiercely
democratic--in theory. In practice the Countess was worshipped; her
smile was worth at least five pounds, and her invitation to tea was
priceless. She could not have been more sincerely adulated in the United
States, the home of social equality.
Denry said to himself:
"And why _shouldn't_ I get her name as patroness? I will have her
name as patroness."
Hence the expedition to Sneyd Hall, one of the ancestral homes of the
Earls of Chell.
III
He had been to Sneyd Hall before many times--like the majority of the
inhabitants of the Five Towns--for, by the generosity of its owner,
Sneyd Park was always open to the public.
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