Martha Jane closed the door behind her by the simple expedient of kicking it to with an agile foot. There was something about her which nobody present could attempt to define, chiefly because she had never looked like that, or anything near it, before. She looked like somebody who had cried a great deal, and then laughed, and while she was about it had done the one as thoroughly as the other. Her face was haggard and drawn, so that from one angle she looked old; but she was also excited and flushed, so that from another she looked almost young. Her dress and her hair were both of them out of control, and she still smelt obviously of doubtful gin. Indeed, the whole effect of her was that she was still decidedly over the line, although more from some sudden astonishment than actual drink. There was a curious irony in the fact that such a respectable happening as an almshouse election should have produced these two—the wild, Bacchanalian figure that was Martha Jane, and the crippled charwoman, with her leg on a tub....
“I’ve a deal agen it, and that’s flat!” announced Martha Jane ... and the shaft from the sun, which had almost departed, illumined her with an access of light.... “Ay, and so will you all, when you’ve heard what I’ve got to say!”
It was Emma who answered her without pause, taking up the gage instantly, and smoothing her own voice still further in order to heighten the contrast with the strident tones.
“Eh, now, Martha Jane Fell, you shouldn’t come bursting in like that! ’Tisn’t nice, when folks is in trouble, to come making a stir; and Mrs. Clapham’s heart not what it should be—not by a deal.”
Martha Jane tossed her head.
“She’ll thank me right enough, bursting or creeping, when she hears what I’ve got to tell!”
Emma’s slow-growing smile conveyed a pitying patronage to the untutored savage.... “Ay, well, you know your own business best, of course,” she rebuked her kindly, “but I can’t see how you know much about ours unless you were listening at t’ house door!”
The hit was a failure, however, and Martha Jane only laughed. She did not mind being accused of a thing like that. Turning her shoulder upon her with a contemptuous shrug, she addressed herself pointedly to Mrs. Clapham.
“I’d like to say, first of all,” she began clearly, “as I’m right sorry about poor Tibbie! I was that done when I heard t’ news, I didn’t know where to turn. I thought a deal o’ the poor lass, though I don’t know as we’d much to do wi’ each other, her and me.”
Now it was Emma’s turn to laugh, although in a perfectly ladylike manner. Martha Jane winced, but her head and her voice went defiantly higher.