"What an idea, Sarah! You do say some th'ngs! I'm sure it all comes of his being a solicitor. My husband always said lawyers were no good." Janet Holmes shook a melancholy head.
"Solicitor? I wouldn't mind his being a solicitor," snapped Sarah. "It's when he's a carpenter and chicken farmer and amateur photographer that I've no patience with him. He'll be standing for Parliament one day just to try something new, you see if he doesn't. I've no patience with a man who makes a profession of his hobbies."
"I don't mind so long as he makes a hobby of his profession," laughed Mary. "John and I have put most of our affairs into his hands."
"Oh. Indeed. Have you? Well, it's your own fault then if you come to grief. Did you advise John to go to Toby?"
"I did," said Mary. "He's our cousin. I'm sure I don't know who else there is."
"I advised John to do nothing of the kind."
Mary raised her eyebrows. This, from Sarah, was a confession of defeat. If Mary had advised John to do one thing when Sarah had asked him to do something else, and he had followed Mary's guidance, then it was strange that Sarah should acknowledge it. Sarah was strange, though.... Always had been rather clever and certainly odd. "Odd" for Market Burton meant any digression from the straight and narrow path of conventionality. You never knew what Sarah would say next.
Callers drifted in. At Market Burton a lady's social success could be measured by the number of teas she attended on Wednesday afternoons. Nearly all the ladies of Market Burton were the wives of retired farmers.
Mary continued to sew and to be depressed by the new-comers. Their hats were depressing; their shoes were depressing; their similarity was the most depressing of all. This was what life in Market Burton did to you. Once these people had risen early and worked hard, and wrestled with the soil that gave them livelihood, as she rose and worked and wrestled. Now, if they moved at all from their chairs by the fire-side, they rose and turned round and round, through the garden-bound streets and chattering parlours of the valley town and then sat down again. It almost seemed as though the rolling hills and open country had proved too much for them. Each generation was born, brought up amongst the scattered farms, worked for a while, and reared a new generation to follow after them, then slipped back into the sheltered valley to wither and die.
Snatches of their conversation drifted towards her across the room—maids, their sisters, the price of butter.