Ivy was not a sensitive soul, but the Beatup attitude was warranted to pierce the thickest skin. The family could not let the matter drop, and kept it up even after those outside had let it fall in to amiable “disremembering.” Ivy’s exuberant correspondence with the forces, her amorous past, her scandalous future, all became subjects of condemnation. Her people did not mean to be unkind, but they nagged and scolded. Perhaps the balking of their revenge on Jerry Sumption made them specially unmerciful towards Ivy—she had to face the torrent of the diverted stream. She had disgraced them as, apparently, none of Mus’ Beatup’s muddled carouses or gin-logged collapses had done. The fine, if beer-blown flower of the Beatups had been hopelessly picked to pieces by her wantonness and indiscretion. Nell was perhaps the most really vindictive of the lot (for Mus’ Beatup was easy-going and Mrs. Beatup loved her daughter through all her reproaches), because she saw in Ivy’s disgrace another danger to her hopes. She had enough odds against her in her poor little reedy romance without all the spilth of Ivy’s bursting thick amours to come tumbling over it, choking out its life. Ivy’s village friends turned against her too, for Polly Sinden was still trying to live up to Bill Putland, and Jen Hollowbone of the Foul Mile remembered the theft of Kadwell and taunted “Sarve her right.” Thyrza, her sister-in-law, was still friendly, but though Ivy liked Thyrza, there had never been any real confidence or comradeship between them—the elder girl was too quiet, too settled, and had always been lacking in that indefinite quality which makes a woman popular with her own sex. Ivy did not respond to Thyrza’s few tentative efforts, made, she suspected, out of pity, and a sense of duty to Tom. Besides, her trouble had soured for the time even her own sweet honest heart, and the sight of Thyrza secure of a man’s love and an even more wonderful hope, smote her with an unbearable sense of her own failure and loneliness.