The Vicar’s wife, still absently nursing the coat that William had thrust into her arm, stared in front of her.
“But—but how awful!” she murmured, “how awful?”
Then Ginger came up and thrust the second coat into her protesting arms.
“Your coat, Mrs. Marks,” he said politely, “what we sold by mistake off the rubbish stall. Me an’ Douglas ’v got it back for you.”
He made a grimace at William which William returned with interest.
They waited breathlessly to see which coat the Vicar’s wife should claim as her own.
She looked down at her armful of coats as if she saw them for the first time.
“B-but,” she said faintly, “I got that coat back. The woman who bought it thought there must be some mistake and brought it to me. These aren’t my coats.... I don’t know anything about these coats.”
Shrill strains of some strident music hall ditty came from the tent. A second messenger came up.
“She won’t stop,” she sobbed, “and the Member’s foaming at the mouth.”