'Well, I'm afraid he suffers very much at times, but he's often well enough.'
The conversation again came to a pause, and both thought of how happy they would be were they taking tea together at the inn at Trentham.
But they were now in the centre of the town, close to the Town Hall, a stupid, square building with two black cannon on either side of the door. Opposite was a great shop with 'Commercial House' written across the second story in gold letters. Bright carpets and coarse goods were piled about the doorway; and from these two houses Piccadilly and Broad Street, its continuation, ran down an incline, and Church Street branched off, giving the town the appearance of a two-pronged fork.
All was red brick blazing under a blue sky without a cloud in it; the red brick that turns to purple; and all the roofs were scarlet—red brick and scarlet tiles, and not a tree anywhere.
'You don't seem to have a tree in Hanley,' Mr. Lennox said.
'I don't think there are many,' she answered, and they gazed at the bald rotundities of the pottery ovens.
He had never seen a town before composed entirely of brick and iron. A town of work; a town in which the shrill scream of the steam train as it rolled solemnly up the incline seemed to be man's cry of triumph over vanquished nature.
After looking about him, Mr. Lennox said, 'What I object to in the town is that there's nothing to do. And it's so blazing hot; for goodness' sake let us get under the shadow of a wall.'
Kate smiled, and as they crossed over they both wiped their faces.
'There are the potteries,' she said, referring to Mr. Lennox's complaint that there was nothing to do in the town. 'Everybody that comes to Hanley goes to see them; but the best are in Stoke.'