“Baines?” The smooth, sliding tones seemed to convey, even in that single word, that it would be better on the whole if the devil himself brought the news, rather than the amiable lawyer. “I’ve never known anything but bad luck come o’ news brought by Mr. Baines. There was that time, you’ll think on, when he come to tell Alice Alderson as she’d a bit o’ money left her by her aunt, and after she’d got engaged on the strength of it, and run up a ter’ble big bill, Mrs. Clapham, with your Tibbie, an’ all, round he come again to say it was all a mistake. Then there was that mighty queer tale about Polly Green, which I shouldn’t as much as mention if we wasn’t friends. Baines had looked in to say as her husband was coming back from abroad, after twenty year, and she went and hanged herself, right off the reel. Ay, and yon other time, you’ll think on (now you’ll surely remember _this_!), when he come to tell Ann Machell as she’d got the same house you’re after now; and blest if she didn’t have a stroke with excitement that very night!” The spirits of the whole company were at zero by now. Even Martha Jane seemed crushed for the time being. Some of them, indeed—Mrs. James, for one—cast longing glances at their dwellings, and thought to themselves that they might just as well be waiting inside. It seemed mean, of course, to desert Mrs. Clapham, and at the critical moment, but nobody could be expected to put up with Emma. They could not understand why she made things seem so hopelessly wrong, as if nothing splendid could possibly happen. It was as if that little smile of hers brushed all the colour out of life, hinting that it was something different from what you had thought. It couldn’t be just that she slanged everybody as their names came up, because they were more than equal to that themselves, and would, if they were honest, admit that it left them all the brighter and better. It was that queer something at the back of Emma’s mind that made you feel so low, something that hinted at knowledge you didn’t possess. It was like being shut in a dark room with somebody you couldn’t see. It was like being a mouse and thinking you knew the whereabouts of the cat; conscious all the time from your head to your tail that it was watching you from somewhere else. As for Mrs. Clapham, her knee was beginning to ache with the long standing, and there was also a grumble about her heart. She, too, had almost begun to wish that she had never come into the street at all, but had stayed quietly inside her cottage. It seemed to her suddenly that she was making an exhibition of herself, standing there with that crowd of women. Not that she actually lost faith in the wonderful outcome that was to be; it was only that the perfect approach was being spoilt. First of all, there had been Martha Jane, turning her handsprings like a clown; and now unexpectedly there was Emma, with her prophecies of ill-luck....