And thereupon her overwrought spirits gave way in a flood of tears, as she angrily averted her face from her sister, who could have cried too, not at the injustice, but with compassion and perplexity lest there should be an equally violent reaction either of remorse or of mirth. It must be confessed that Albinia was very much the creature of health. Never having been ill before, the depression had been so new that it broke her completely down; convalescence made her fractious. Recovery, however, filled her with such an ecstasy of animal spirits that her time seemed to be entirely passed in happiness or in sleep, and cares appeared to have lost all power. It was so sudden a change that Winifred was startled, though it was a very pleasant one, and she did not reflect that this was as far from the calm, self-restrained, meditative tranquillity enjoined by Maurice, as had been the previous restless, querulous state. Both were body more than mind, but Mrs. Ferrars was much more ready to be merry with Albinia than to moralize about her. And it was droll that the penny club was one of the first stages in her revival. ‘Oh, mamma,’ cried Lucy, flying in, ‘Mr. Dusautoy is at the door. There is such a to do. All the women have been getting gin with their penny club tickets, and Mrs. Brock has been stealing the money, and Mr. Dusautoy wants to know if you paid up three-and-fourpence for the Hancock children.’ Albinia instantly invited Mr. Dusautoy to explain in person, and he entered, hearty and pleasant as ever, but in great haste, for he had left his Fanny keeping the peace between five angry women, while he came out to collect evidence. The Bayford clothing-club payments were collected by Mrs. Brock, the sexton’s wife, and distributed by tickets to be produced at the various shops in the town. Mrs. Brock had detected some women exchanging their tickets for gin, and the offending parties retaliated by accusing her of embezzling the subscriptions, both parties launching into the usual amount of personalities and exaggerations. Albinia’s testimony cleared Mrs. Brock as to the three-and-fourpence, but she ‘snuffed the battle from afar,’ and rushed into a scheme of taking the clothing-club into her own hands, collecting the pence, having the goods from London, and selling them herself--she would propose it on the very first opportunity to the Dusautoys. Winifred asked if she had not a good deal on her hands already. ‘My dear, I have the work in me of a young giant.’ ‘And will Mr. Kendal like it?’ ‘He would never find it out unless I told him, and very possibly not then. Six months hence, perhaps, he may tell me he is glad that Lucy is inclined to useful pursuits, and that _is_ approval, Winifred, much more than if I went and worried him about every little petty woman’s matter.’ ‘Every one to her taste,’ thought Winifred, who had begun to regard Mr. and Mrs. Kendal in the same relation as the king and queen at chess.