nuous confidence she assumed that Edwin Clayhanger, too,
would keep an absolute silence about it. She had therefore naught to
fear, except in the privacy of his own mind. She did not blame
herself--it never occurred to her to do so--but she rather wondered at
herself, inimically, prophesying that one day her impulsiveness would
throw her into some serious difficulty. The memory of the night
beautifully coloured her whole daily existence. In spite of her
avoidance of the town, due to her dread of seeing Clayhanger, she was
constantly thinking: "But this cannot continue for ever. One day I am
bound to meet him again." And she seemed to be waiting for that day.

It came with inevitable quickness. The last day but one of June was
appointed throughout the country for the celebration of the Centenary of
Sunday Schools. Neither Hilda nor any of the Orgreave children had ever
seen the inside of a Sunday School; and the tendency up at Lane End
House was to condescend towards the festival as towards a rejoicing of
the proletariat. But in face of the magnitude of the affair, looming
more enormous as it approached, this attitude could not be maintained.
The preparations for the Centenary filled newspapers and changed the
physiognomy of towns. And on the morning of the ceremonial service,
gloriously flattered by the sun, there was candid excitement at the
breakfast-table of the Orgreaves. Mr. Orgreave regretted that pressure
of work would prevent him from seeing the fun. Tom was going to see the
fun at Hanbridge. Jimmie and Johnnie were going to see the fun, but they
would not say where. The servants were going to see the fun. Charlie had
returned to London. Alicia wanted to go and see the fun, but as she was
flushed and feverish, Mrs. Orgreave forbade and decided to remain at
home with Alicia. Otherwise, even Mrs. Orgreave would have gone to see
the fun. Hilda and Janet apparently hesitated about going, but Mr.
Orgreave, pointing out that there could not under the most favourable
circumstance be another Centenary of Sunday Schools for at least a
hundred years, sarcastically urged them to set forth. The fact was, as
Janet teasingly told him while she hung on his neck, that he wished to
accentuate as much as possible his own martyrdom to industry. Were not
all the shops and offices of the Five Towns closed? Did not every member
of his family, save those detained by illness, attend the historic
spectacle of the Centenary? He alone had