He knew almost everything, and therefore, while despising the public for knowing so little, he encouraged it to continue wondering, so that he might continue despising and instructing it.
Now it was an almost unprecedented thing for two members of the small trades-man class to come into Miss Ford's drawing-room, especially on a Wednesday.

The utmost social mingling of the classes that those walls had ever seen was the moment when Miss Ford asked the electric light man what he thought of the war.

The electric light man's reply had been quoted in the dialect on two or three of the following Wednesdays, as a proof of Miss Ford's daring intimacy with men in Another Station of Life.

Really it would have been simpler, though of course not so picturesque, to have quoted it direct from its original source, _John Bull_, the electric light man's Bible.
The entrance of the witch and the Mayor was to a certain extent a crisis, but Miss Ford kept her head, and her three friends, though grasping at once the extraordinary situation, did not give way to panic.
"Well, well, well," said the Mayor, looking round and breathing very loudly.

"This is a cosy little nook you've got 'ere." He was not at all at his ease, but being a business man, and being also blessed with a peculiarly inexpressive face, he was successfully dissembling his discomfort.
For it had happened that the lift had been one of those lifts that can do no wrong, the kind that the public is indulgently allowed to work by itself.