“Baines has nowt to do with it!” Martha Jane snapped, again forgetting the Cause for the irresistible lure. Even at the door of Heaven she would have resented this continual trailing of the inevitable Baines jacket. “It’s his lordship as matters, when it comes to a choice. Baines is nobbut a pen-pusher, to do as he’s tellt what!... You’d get a house right enough, though,” she swung back to Mrs. Clapham. “Only, whatever you do, don’t let her have them barns!” The charwoman had remained silent during this concerted outpouring of opinion, all the more strenuous when it came for having been held in check. But the earnestness behind it was bound to have some effect even upon her dull wrath, her rebellion against fate, her bitter and sullen determination to snatch what she could from the damaged day. After all, it was only what in ordinary circumstances she would have said herself, what, indeed, was being said to her even now by her own heart. She reminded herself, however, that the clamouring women knew nothing of Emma’s desire to atone; not that it was any use trying to tell them about it in their present mood. Led by Martha Jane, they would certainly laugh it to scorn, or, even if they did not laugh, they would refuse to believe. It took some believing, too, Mrs. Clapham was bound to admit, with Emma’s round little face expressing venom in every line. But then, even if she had come to repent, you could not expect her to change all through; and, repentance once granted, it was easy to argue that, the unkinder she had been to Stephen, the kinder she would probably be to his orphaned children. It was always the converts who went to the farthest extremes; they were the swing of the pendulum, the opposite side of the shield. Nor did it follow that, because you couldn’t stand Martha Jane, you wouldn’t be simply an angel to everyone else. Mrs. Clapham had been as good a mother as there was in the whole world, but she, too, had never been able to stand Martha Jane. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that Emma was not being an angel at this particular moment. “You’re a nice one to go preaching to others, Martha Jane Fell,” she was saying virulently; “you that was dead drunk the whole o’ this afternoon!” Mrs. Clapham muttered “Nay, now, Emma—nay, now, nay!” putting up a heavy hand; but already the words had had their desired effect. The Chorus drew away from about Martha Jane like a single soul, testifying to their personal worth by exclamations and looks of disgust. (Mrs. James remarked later that she _had_ noticed a smell of drink—a really refined person couldn’t miss it—but there, since the War there had been so little of it about, only them as fair lived for it could believe when they happened across it!)