"How horrid!" said Nellie frankly. "And he 's got nobody at all to be mayoress."
"Mrs. Prettyman would be mayoress," said Denry. "When there's no wife or daughter, it's always a sister if there is one."
"But can you imagine Mrs. Prettyman as mayoress? Why, they say she scrubs her own doorstep—after dark. They ought to make you mayor!"
"Do you fancy yourself as mayoress?" he inquired.
"I should be better than Mrs. Prettyman anyhow!"
"I believe you 'd make an A1 mayoress," said Denry.
"I should be frightfully nervous," she confidentially admitted.
"I doubt it," said he.
The fact was that since her return to Bursley from the honeymoon Nellie was an altered woman. She had acquired, as it were in a day, to an astonishing extent, what in the Five Towns is called "a nerve."
"I should like to try it," said she.