'Funny you should have hit on that,' said he. 'Old Daddy Perkins always called it his ewe-lamb.'
Thus spoken, the name of the greatest authority on Wedgwood ware that Europe has ever known curiously impressed me.
'I suppose you knew him?' I questioned.
'Considering that I was one of the pall-bearers at his funeral, and caught the champion cold of my life!'
'What sort of a man was he?'
'Outside Wedgwood ware he wasn't any sort of a man. He was that scourge of society, a philanthropist,' said Mr Brindley. 'He was an upright citizen, and two thousand people followed him to his grave. I'm an upright citizen, but I have no hope that two thousand people will follow me to my grave.'
'You never know what may happen,' I observed, smiling.
'No.' He shook his head. 'If you undermine the moral character of your fellow-citizens by a long course of unbridled miscellaneous philanthropy, you can have a funeral procession as long as you like, at the rate of about forty shillings a foot. But you'll never touch the great heart of the enlightened public of these boroughs in any other way. Do you imagine anyone cared a twopenny damn for Perkins's Wedgwood ware?'
'It's like that everywhere,' I said.
'I suppose it is,' he assented unwillingly.