There was not a soul in the place but would speak well of her, she knew; everybody, that is, whose testimony really counted. Hers was, in fact, that peculiar position which perhaps only the poor can ever achieve, dependent as it is upon character alone. Then too, the very man who had built the almshouses had promised her one of them long ago. He was a rich Lancashire brewer, with a gruff manner and a generous heart, and Ann Clapham had been a servant in his Westmorland shooting-box before she married. “Jones,” he had said to her one day—(she was Ann Atkinson just then, but he called the whole of his household “Jones”)—“if ever you want one of those houses of mine, you’re to be sure to have it. I’ll be dead then, of course... can’t live for ever... but there’ll be a committee. No d—d good, probably, but it’s the best I can do. Tell ’em from me, Jones, that you’re to have a house; and tell ’em from me, Jones, that you’re a d—d good sort...” And now, after all these years, “Jones” had at last repeated the millionaire brewer’s words, and so realistically that nobody who had known the old man could refuse to believe them. Not but what she had earned the house right enough on her own merits, as she did not need telling; still, it was all to the good to be backed by old Mr. T. There were other candidates, however, so that a meeting had to be called, though she was assured time and again that it would only be formal. But when she came to her final canvassing for votes, she found that at least one of the other applicants had been in before her. Times had changed even in that remote little village, and it was not everybody now who remembered old Mr. T. Nevertheless, it had been a decided shock to her to find that her most important opponent was Martha Jane Fell. Martha Jane was a neighbour of Mrs. Clapham’s, living just up the street, and Mrs. Clapham knew all about her. Younger than her rival by a good many years, Martha Jane had been very pretty as a girl, and even now had a decided “way” with her. It was a “way,” at least, that always went down with the men, and in pursuance of this particular piece of good fortune she had canvassed the men on the committee first. Mrs. Clapham could not help feeling it a distinct outrage that her most dangerous obstacle should take the form of this peculiarly worthless woman. Her own value seemed somehow to be lessened by it, her own virtue maligned. But then men, she remarked to herself scornfully, were always like wax in the hands of a woman like that. One of her own sex would have had her doubts any day about Martha Jane Fell.