s evening had been a triumph. She was glad that she had
shown them that she could at any rate do one thing rather well; but she
was equally glad that she had obtained Janet's promise to avoid any
discussion of her qualities or her situation. After all, with her
self-conscious restraint and her pitiful assured income of three pounds
a week, she was a poor little creature compared with the easy, luxurious
beings of this household, whose upkeep could not cost less than three
pounds a day. Janet, in rich and complicated white, and glistening with
jewels at hand and neck, was a princess beside her. She hated her spare
black frock, and for the second time in her life desired expensive
clothes markedly feminine. She felt that she was at a grave
disadvantage, and that to remedy this disadvantage would be necessary,
not only dresses and precious stones, but an instinctive faculty of soft
allurement which she had not. Each gesture of Janet's showed seductive
grace, while her own rare gestures were stiffened by a kind of masculine
harshness. Every time that the sad-eyed and modest Edwin Clayhanger
glanced at Janet, and included herself in the glance, she fancied that
he was unjustly but inevitably misprising herself. And at length she
thought: "Why did I make Janet promise that I shouldn't be talked about?
Why shouldn't he know all about my mourning, and that I'm the only girl
in the Five Towns that can write shorthand. Why should I be afraid to
recite again? However much I might have suffered through nervousness if
I'd recited, I should have shown I'm not such a poor little thing as all
that! Why am I such a baby?" She wilted under her own disdain.

It was strange to think that Edwin Clayhanger, scarcely older than the
irresponsible Charlie, was the heir to an important business, was
potentially a rich and influential man. Had not Mr. Orgreave said that
old Mr. Clayhanger could buy up all the Orgreaves if he chose? It was
strange to think that this wistful and apparently timid young man, this
nice boy, would one day be the head of a household, and of a table such
as this! Yes, it would assuredly arrive! Everything happened. And the
mother of that household? Would it be she? Her imagination leaped far
into the future, as she exchanged a quiet, furtive smile with Mrs.
Orgreave, and she tried to see herself as another Mrs. Orgreave, a
strenuous and passionate past behind her, honoured, beloved, teased,
adored. But she could not quite