"It shall be used," cried Mrs Grantly, "I'll buy it, and I'll make it into dusters for which purpose it was obviously intended, and every woman in Redmarley shall have two for Christmas as an extra. A good strong duster never comes amiss." "Perhaps," Miss Tibbits said coldly, "you will undertake to procure the material." "Certainly," said Mrs Grantly, "but I'll buy it in blouse lengths, and every one different. Why should a whole village wear the same thing as though it was a reformatory?" It appeared that the vicar had called with his list of the "deserving poor." In five minutes Mrs Grantly had detached each person, and made a note of her age and circumstances. She had only been in the village a week, and she already knew every soul in it. She whirled off the vicar in a gale of enthusiasm, nobody else got a word in edgewise. Finally she departed with him into the hall, and saw him out at the front door, and her last whispered words were characteristic: "You've let that Tibbits woman bully you for twenty years, now I'm going to bully you for a bit instead, and between us we'll give those poor dears a bit of cheer this Christmas." From that moment the vicar was Mrs Grantly's slave. Nobody knew how the affair leaked out, but the whole thing was known in the village before a week had passed, with the result that fifteen women visited the vicar, one after the other, and after much circumlocution intimated that "If so be as 'e would be so kind, they'd be glad if 'e'd 'int to the ladies as they 'adn't nearly wore out last Christmas petticoat, and, if it were true wot they'd 'eard as they was talkin' of givin' summat different, might Mrs Mustoe, Gegg, Uzzel, or Radway, etc., have anything they did choose to make as warn't a petticoat." There was a slump in petticoats. In despair he went to Mrs Grantly, and she undertook to see the matter through. "It's absurd," Mrs Grantly remarked to her daughter, "in a little place like this where one knows all the people, and exactly what they're like, to make things all the same size. Fancy me trying to get into a blouse that would fit that skinny Miss Tibbits! A little common sense is what's needed in this sewing society, and, Marjory, my dear, I'm going to do my best to supply it." * * * * * * Throughout the years that followed, Mrs Grantly continued to supply common sense to the inhabitants of Redmarley. She found places for young servants, both in her own household and those of her friends, till gradually there were many links between the village and "'Orse and Field and Garrison." More than one Redmarley damsel married a gunner "on the strength." Had the intending bridegroom been anything else, Mrs Grantly would herself have forbidden the banns! CHAPTER XI CHRISTMAS AT REDMARLEY