"Take your overcoat off and sit down, will you?" said Mr. Bryany as he turned to replenish the fire from a bucket. "It’s my private sitting-room. Whenever I am on my travels, I always take a private sitting-room. It pays, you know. Of course I mean if I’m alone. When I’m looking after Mr. Sachs, of course we share a sitting-room." Edward Henry agreed lightly: "I suppose so." But the fact was that he was much impressed. He himself had never taken a private sitting-room in any hotel. He had sometimes felt the desire, but he had not had the "face," as they say down there, to do it. To take a private sitting-room in a hotel was generally regarded in the Five Towns as the very summit of dashing expensiveness and futile luxury. "I didn’t know they had private sitting-rooms in this shanty," said Edward Henry. Mr. Bryany, having finished with the fire, fronted him, shovel in hand, with a remarkable air of consummate wisdom, and replied: "You can generally get what you want if you insist on having it, even in this ’shanty.’" Edward Henry regretted his use of the word "shanty." Inhabitants of the Five Towns may allow themselves to twit the historic and excellent Turk’s Head, but they do not extend the privilege to strangers. And in justice to the Turk’s Head, it is to be clearly stated that it did no more to cow and discourage travellers than any other provincial hotel in England. It was a sound and serious English provincial hotel; and it linked century to century. Said Mr. Bryany: "’Merica’s the place for hotels." "Yes, I expect it is." "Been to Chicago?" "No, I haven’t." Mr. Bryany, as he removed his overcoat, could be seen politely forbearing to raise his eyebrows. "Of course you’ve been to New York?" Edward Henry would have given all he had in his pockets to be able to say that he had been to New York, but, by some inexplicable negligence, he had hitherto omitted to go to New York, and, being a truthful person, except in the gravest crises, he was obliged to answer miserably: "No, I haven’t." Mr. Bryany gazed at him with amazement and compassion, apparently staggered by the discovery that there existed in England a man of the world who had contrived to struggle on for forty years without perfecting his education by a visit to New York.