So crushed, indeed, was the whole group, that it seemed for the moment as if nobody would ever have courage to answer. But even the most oppressed will fight to the last ounce for a thing that has touched their imagination, and Mrs. James had again been injured in her ideal. “Mr. Baines ’ll bring no more bad luck than most folks—that I’ll be bound!” she burst out sharply, even twisting herself from under the feathers to glare. “Bad luck comes of itself and with nobody’s help; we all on us know that. But, speaking for myself, I’m not sure as even bad luck brought by Mr. Baines wouldn’t sound like good!” Emma said nothing for quite a long time, but just stood staring with her little smile, while the embarrassed red grew in the other’s face.... Her crossed hands, cupping her elbows, did not so much as twitch. “I’m not saying it’s what Mr. Baines _brings_,” she answered at last, as Mrs. James dived back; “it’s what he _leaves_. He comes up all nice and smiling and sweet-spoken like, and you feel rarely pleased. It’s only after he’s gone you find as things isn’t what they seem.” “They can seem any old how they choose, so long as I get t’ house....” This was Martha Jane, recovered a second time from her wilting. “News can come through a dozen Baineses, so long as it says I’m in!” Mrs. James being to all intents and purposes invisible, Emma had plenty of time to attend to Martha Jane. “I’m surprised, I’m sure, to think of you being after one o’ _them_ houses!” she remarked sweetly. “When I heard tell about it, I could hardly believe my ears. The folks in them houses is expected to keep ’em spick as a pin, and I can’t rightly see you putting your hand to that. You’ll have governors and their wives calling and ferreting round to see what you’re at; and a nice to-do there’ll be if things isn’t just so. Seems to me you’ll have to alter your ways in other things, too, if you mean taking yon house.... But there, after all, I reckon you know your own business best....” “Ann Clapham’s offered to scrub floors for me as a start off!” Martha Jane laughed. “That’ll give me a leg-up!...” She changed her tone suddenly to the professional whine, as if for the benefit of somebody not present. “Folks isn’t all as hard as you folks seem to think. There’s Mr. Andland promised somebody should see to me if I was ill; and his lordship’ll send me one of his own gardeners if him as belongs almshouses is overpressed.” She caught Mrs. James’s sniff from under the feathers, and grew in defiance. “Right kind about it his lordship was, I’m sure! Says I’m a deal too delicate to lift a finger myself.” “No use counting on it, and so I tell you!” Mrs. Tanner put in briskly. “Ann Clapham’s going to get yon house—not you!”—and Mrs. James snorted “Ay, I should think so, indeed!” terribly rankled about the lordship; and other comments followed at which Martha bridled and brazened and wilted by turn. When they had all finished, Emma began again in her expressionless tones.