And from behind the dusty ferns that were only just alive, and would so very much have preferred not to live at all, Emma Catterall also stared at the figure that was the cynosure of every eye. Its serenity, its dignity, its contented assurance seemed to amuse her almost as much as they amused Martha Jane. Her beady black eyes brightened as they fastened upon it, and slowly there grew on her lips the queer little smile which everybody in the village hated without knowing why. But presently, as nothing happened in the street, she stirred and dropped her lids. “Ay, well, she knows her own business best,” she murmured to herself, still smiling, as she moved away....
After a while Mrs. Tanner came pattering out to join Mrs. Clapham, followed by young Mrs. James from her grand house that had pillars to its door. This was too much for Mrs. Clapham’s own side of the street, which promptly sent forth supporters in the shape of Mrs. Airey and Mrs. Dunn. Martha Jane, heating a pair of rickety curling-tongs at a tallow-dip, was more amused than ever. “Got her court an’ all now!” she observed to the guttering candle as she singed her hair.
The postman might now be looked for at any moment, and excitement mounted in the group in the street. Mrs. Clapham’s Court—or, more correctly speaking, her Chorus—was full of good-humoured banter, feeling more and more thrilled with every minute that passed. Mrs. Tanner’s thin little voice chirped its jests at dark and haughty Mrs. James, round and motherly Mrs. Airey, and limp and careworn Mrs. Dunn; while the heroine of the occasion, too nervous to say much, left them most of the talking and merely beamed upon all alike.
Mrs. Tanner, out of the little pursed-up mouth that was so ridiculously like a wren’s, was of opinion that it was worse than useless to be looking for Mr. Baines.
“Nay, it’ll be t’ post, you’ll see!” she asserted confidently to the crowd. “Ay, he’ll have slipped it into the post.... I don’t say but what it wouldn’t be more an attention like if he brought it himself, but it isn’t in nature what you’d look for from Baines. Baines is the sort that first has to be driven to his bed and then shaken out of it. Depend upon it, it won’t be Baines!”
Young Mrs. James flushed with annoyance, and drew herself up haughtily. She had a weakness for amiable, short-sighted Mr. Baines, who at a recent Red Cross bazaar had made the pleasant mistake of addressing her as Lady Thorpe.... “I don’t agree with you, Mrs. Tanner,” she contradicted her coldly. “Mr. Baines is a gentleman, and he’ll do the right thing. Speaking as one as has had personal experience of Mr. Baines, it seems to me a deal more likely that he’ll come himself.”
“Nay, it’ll be t’ post!” Mrs. Tanner persisted, shaking an obstinate head. “You haven’t been here that long, Mrs. James, and you don’t know Baines as well as us. He’s not like to do for himself what he can shape to get done for him by somebody else. Ay, it’ll be t’ post!”
“Supposing it’s neither?” Mrs. Airey put in with a kindly laugh; and Mrs. Dunn, whose brain was as careworn as her face, observed, “Supposing it’s Martha Jane——?” but was hastily elbowed into silence.
“It don’t matter how it comes, as long as it comes right!” Mrs. Clapham answered the lot of them, with her heavenly smile. She soared above them all like a great comfortable hen above bantams and sparrows, growing and gaining in significance as they dwindled and lost....
“Ay, it’ll come right, no doubt about that!” At once the Chorus forgot its differences in a breath of united devotion. Mrs. Dunn’s remark had been made without her noticing it, so to speak, a kind of side-slip of her deflated mind.... “And there’s nobody’ll be more pleased than us, Ann Clapham, not even yourself!”