Mrs. Eames, for instance, had no objection to beer, often smoked cigarettes and might have bet small sums if the temptation had come her way. She did nothing worse in the village than stir up young men and maidens to act plays; which they ought to have liked doing but did not. She was not herself unpopular, but her plays were, and the announcement that a fresh one was to be started, was received year after year with groans from those likely to be implicated, and from the whole community with a stolid passive resistance, which only energy as unfailing as Mrs. Eames's could possibly have overcome. She knew all this and fully expected that the pageant prospect would be received by the village people with mutterings of revolt. It was. Mrs. Eames, who believed in what she called personal influence, made a rapid visitation of the village, explained the glories and delights of pageants, and was met almost everywhere with gloomy hostility. Only James Hinton of the Anchor Inn gave her the least encouragement, and even his reception of the project would scarcely have been called encouraging except by contrast to the hostility elsewhere. Hinton, at least, did not condemn the pageant without hearing what it was to be. He questioned Mrs. Eames about it and finally promised to think the matter over carefully. Mrs. Eames summoned a public meeting to consider the pageant and to make the necessary arrangements. This was always her way of proceeding. She liked public meetings because they gave her opportunities for making speeches, and she believed, like most English people, that a meeting is as necessary to an undertaking of any kind as trousers are to a man. There would be something indecent about a scheme which came into the world not clothed in a resolution of approval, duly passed, not adorned with a properly appointed treasurer and secretary. A Tuesday ten days after Sir Evelyn's visit was fixed for the meeting and the schoolroom was chosen as the place of assembly. Mrs. Eames did not expect a large audience. While discussing the meeting beforehand with her husband she was able to predict with complete confidence who would be there. "James Hinton, of course," she said. "He's your churchwarden." "I suppose he's more or less bound to be there," said the vicar, "to represent me. I'm certainly not going." "Of course not, darling. Everyone knows you hate meetings and you wouldn't be any use if you did go. I'm sure the school teachers will be there. They always come to all meetings." The schoolmaster and his two assistant damsels attended Mrs. Eames's meetings regularly. The schoolmaster liked proposing resolutions. His assistants took it in turns to second anything he proposed. "And Mrs. Mudge," Mrs. Eames went on, "and Mrs. Purly and----" She named half a dozen old women, all of them widows, all of them mildly pious, with a vague feeling that attendance at any meeting summoned by Mrs. Eames was a religious act. "And some of the schoolboys."