"Sorry, my darling! but the world is not a nice place. He picked her up somehow--they say she was a commercial traveller's wife--left on his hands at a country inn. Anyway she's not divorced, and the husband's alive. She looks like a walking skeleton, and is probably going to die. Nevertheless they say Burrows adores her. And as for my resentments--don't be shocked--I'm inclined to like Burrows all the better for _that_ little affair. But then I'm not pious, like the people here. However, they don't mind--and they don't mind the drink--and they believe he spends their money on magnificent dinners at hotels--and they don't mind that. They don't mind anything--they shout themselves hoarse whenever Burrows speaks--they're as proud as Punch if he shakes hands with them--and then they tell the most gruesome tales of him behind his back, and like him all the better, apparently, for being a scoundrel. Queer but true. Well, here we are--now, darling, you may expect to be stared at!" For they had entered on the village street, and Ferth Magna, by some quick freemasonry, had become suddenly conscious of the bride and bridegroom. Here and there a begrimed man in his shirt-sleeves would open his front door cautiously and look at them; the children and womenkind stood boldly on the doorsteps and stared; while the people in the little shops ran back into the street, parcels and baskets in hand. The men working the morning shift had just come back from the pits, and their wives were preparing to wash their blackened lords, before the whole family sat down to tea. But both tea and ablutions were forgotten, so long as the owner of Ferth Place and the new Lady Tressady were in sight. The village eyes took note of everything; of the young man's immaculate serge suit and tan waistcoat, his thin, bronzed face and fair moustache; of the bride's grey gown, the knot of airy pink at her throat, the coils of bright brown hair on which her hat was set, and the buckles on her pretty shoes. Then the village retreated within doors again; and each house buzzed and gossiped its fill. There had been a certain amount of not very cordial response to George's salutations; but to Letty's thinking the women had eyed her with an unpleasant and rather hostile boldness. "Mary Batchelor's house is down here," said George, turning into a side lane, not without a feeling of relief. "I hope we sha'n't find her out--no, there she is. You can't call these people affectionate, can you?" They were close on a group of three brick cottages all close together. Their doors were all open. In one cottage a stout collier's wife was toiling through her wash. At the door of another the sewing-machine agent was waiting for his weekly payment; while on the threshold of the third stood an elderly tottering woman shading her eyes from the light as she tried to make out the features of the approaching couple. "Why, Mary!" said George, "you haven't forgotten me? I have brought my wife to see you."