Sir Oswald's Peculiar Letter

In Which a Letter is Recieved

At dawn, a great number of invitations were sent out. They arrived to burrows, clutched in the maws of earthworms and moles; they congealed in the smoke above foundries, and engraved themselves on coalfaces.

There was to be a ball on May Eve.

***

Elsewhere, as twilight arrived in the hills and made itself comfortable, two riders appeared on the road from the south.

Behind them lay open country, of the type one imagines when one seeks a moment of refreshment: rambling hedgerows bubbling with blossom, broad fields and leafy copses, birds gossiping on some matter or other. Ahead of them it reached an abrupt end with the sudden and impertinent chimneys of a brace of manufactories, and the lowered heads of a row of cottages.

The town at their feet appeared to be in the midst of a rapid costume change. It had barely found time to discard villagers' rags and don the frills of a fashionable resort town when some irate stage manager had swept in and wrapped it in the iron and leather of industry. One could observe even from a distance how the smuts settled among the geraniums.

"A grim place, sir," the smaller of the men remarked. From his drab clothing, he had the appearance of a servant. From his white-blonde hair and wide pale eyes, he had the apperance of having been left too long in the laundry.

"Grim is as grim does, Burslem," the taller rider replied. In a fine silk waistcoat, his black hair worn in short curls, he appeared both tolerably wealthy and intolerably handsome. His name was Sir Oswald Wealwright, and his buttons were meticulously polished. "Grim is as grim does. I daresay you should find a tannery rather a grim place, as well; but do your leather boots not keep your feet warm?"

Burslem replied that, it being a hot and humid April day, his feet were in fact uncomfortably so.

The word Burslem had wished to employ had not been grim. But was there a word appropriate for a certain flimsiness to a place, as though a careless kick might tear through the landscape? Perhaps the word he sought was uncanny.

But his master would have no truck with a word like that, so Burslem contented himself with a finger rubbed against his lucky sprig of St John's wort.

For a passing moment, it seemed to him that the smoke issuing from one of the great brick chimneys had taken the form of a vast, rearing dragon; but when he blinked, the vision had dispersed.