From the beginning, Sam’s rise in the world had borne heavily on Madge, his sister, who was of an age for gaiety and of a mind untouched by ambition, personal or vicarious. When Sam went to the Grammar School, Madge was in service and very content. Anne had her out of that at once; she wasn’t going to run the risk of Madge being the servant in the house of one of Sands school companions. It was unusual, but Madge preferred service, where she was lucky in her employers, to the weaving-shed, where she had free evenings, but strenuous days with no gossiping callers at the back door to break their monotony. And it became a considerable question in Madge’s mind whether she would now be able to outface Anne in the matter of George Chappie. Anne required a presentable brother-in-law for Sam. Like Madge, George was unambitious, except that he wanted her, which was ambition of a kind. Madge was small, like her mother, but derived in most else from her father. She had freckles and carroty hair, and the makings of a querulous shrew, but George saw otherwise, and desired Madge to have and to hold, for better for worse, and didn’t perceive that the odds were heavily against its being better. He was a wisp of a man himself, and thought he was enterprising because he was a window-cleaner; window-cleaning was a new trade then. But Anne did not concur with that opinion, and Madge was in no very sanguine frame of mind when George came in one night with an “It’s now or never” look unmistakably in his eye. The trouble was that Anne was not the sort of mother one defied with impunity. He came in shyly enough--a determined George was a contradiction in terms--but plucked up courage at once when he found that she was alone but for Sam. Sam’s presence was inevitable, but need not be acknowledged. In a house, not, indeed, of one room, but of one fire and one gas-jet, Sam had grown apt at insulating himself when he sat with his books at the table. The business of the house went on, so did Sam’s studies, and neither interfered with the other. Sam, absorbed in his construe of Cicero’s _De Senectute_ for the morrow, was absolutely unconscious of Madge and George. It was not Sam who troubled George, but Madge had truth with her when she told her suitor that he looked worried. George jerked his thumb vaguely streetwards. “It’s her again,” he explained. “I can’t think why God made landladies. I ask you, Madge, is another blanket in this weather a thing to fly into a temper about?” “It’s cold,” said Madge. “Won’t she give you another?” “I don’t know yet whether she’ll give me one or not. But she’s had my last word. Another blanket or I’ll flit.” “You’ve threatened that so often.” He admitted it. “I know. It takes an earthquake to shift some folks, and I reckon I’m one of them. I stay where I’m set.” And his tone implied that conservatism was an admirable virtue. Madge did not think so. “That’s what my mother says of you,” she observed, a trifle tartly.