More than one person present had plenty against it, as she knew, but she counted upon their lack of courage to take up the challenge. It was true that they had cried out, had given her plainly to understand what it was they felt, but she guessed that they would flinch when it came to stating their reasons. Until to-night there had been only one person who had ever openly flung her the truth, and that person was luckily absent. She was congratulating herself upon this particular fact when the unlatched door suddenly swung wide, and somebody who had obviously been listening in the porch almost tumbled into the room. She looked about her a moment in order to gather her scattered wits, and then—“I’ve summat agen it, for one!” proclaimed Martha Jane Fell. The whole company gave a nervous jump when she tumbled into the room, as usual keeping up her unwarranted rôle of village clown. The effect, indeed, was almost as if she had entered it head over heels. Even Mrs. Clapham lifted her head to look at this latest comer. But Emma Catterall did more than jump. She had remained seated hitherto, as if conscious that no more intimidating spectacle could be presented to the crowd, but on Martha Jane’s entrance she rose to her feet. Standing beside the table, she looked like a stout little pillar-box which had missed its allowance of Government red. Her eyes which, during that moment of triumph, had looked beady and bright, suddenly changed in expression, and became beady and dull. Her arms, which had remained still so long that it seemed they must have been clamped, released themselves now to their wonted mechanical act. Martha Jane closed the door behind her by the simple expedient of kicking it to with an agile foot. There was something about her which nobody present could attempt to define, chiefly because she had never looked like that, or anything near it, before. She looked like somebody who had cried a great deal, and then laughed, and while she was about it had done the one as thoroughly as the other. Her face was haggard and drawn, so that from one angle she looked old; but she was also excited and flushed, so that from another she looked almost young. Her dress and her hair were both of them out of control, and she still smelt obviously of doubtful gin. Indeed, the whole effect of her was that she was still decidedly over the line, although more from some sudden astonishment than actual drink. There was a curious irony in the fact that such a respectable happening as an almshouse election should have produced these two—the wild, Bacchanalian figure that was Martha Jane, and the crippled charwoman, with her leg on a tub.... “I’ve a deal agen it, and that’s flat!” announced Martha Jane ... and the shaft from the sun, which had almost departed, illumined her with an access of light.... “Ay, and so will you all, when you’ve heard what I’ve got to say!”