Emma had almost stopped quivering by now, and seemed to have got herself firmly in hand. “You’re talking ter’ble wild, Martha Jane!” she admonished her quietly. “I reckon you haven’t got over yon beano of yours this afternoon. I don’t know as it isn’t lowering myself to discuss the matter at all, but where’s this telegraph you make such a song about, I’d like to know?” “Nay, _you’ll_ know best about that!” The pivoting prosecutor was swift. “Kitchen fire could tell, likely, if it was nobbut axed....” Sweeping her off the earth again, she turned back to the rest, happily conscious of now being able to hold them as long as she chose. “The fact is, I couldn’t help feeling a bit down when news come as I’d lost the house. I don’t say as perhaps Ann Clapham here hadn’t the best right, but still there was more than a few as considered it might ha’ been me.” (She paused at this point, as if to allow an opening to Mrs. James, but the latter was too absorbed to avail herself of the chance.) “Ay, I was right down,” Martha Jane continued, with cheerful ease, “and badly in want of a bit o’ comfort. Likely I carried over far, being rarely troubled, but that’s nowt to do with the present matter. It took me as long to get over the comfort, though”—she grinned impishly—“as the disappointment!—but as soon as I was myself again I writ a line to his lordship.” (Here she paused a second time, even more pointedly than before, and Mrs. James, awakened as if by a trumpet, obligingly played up.) “Well, I tellt his lordship what I thought about things in general, and while I was at Post Office getting t’ stamp, t’ lass and me had a bit of a chat. ‘Grand news this for Mrs. Clapham,’ says I, conversational-like, and she just gawps at me like a coffin-hole. ‘Grand?’ says she, as bright as a dead fish: ‘you call t’ news as her daughter is dying _grand_?’ ... ‘What, surely to goodness you don’t say—’ says I, looking as much like a hen at a bucket as she did herself. ‘Well, anyway, that’s what telegraph said this morning,’ said she; and then it all come out. I was that puzzled I left t’ stamp behind me on t’ counter, and they sent telegraph-boy after me with it. ‘You was up our way this morning, wasn’t you?’ I axed, as quiet as you like, and he says ‘Ay, message for Catterall!’ as pat as butter. ‘Nay, what, you mean Clapham,’ says I, but he stuck to it I was wrong. ‘C.A.T.—cat; and a bad ’un at that!’ says he, impident-like, and went flying off; and by t’ time I’d reached home it come over me how it was.” Emma punctuated this dramatic recital with a superior laugh. “What, yon’s no proof as I can see!” she protested scornfully. “I tell you what it is, Ann Clapham, she’s making it all up! You’ll not have forgotten, likely, as she’s after yon house herself? If she can saddle you wi’ t’ children, she’ll have nowt to do but sail in!”