ty in Woodhouse, full of fine shades,
ranging from the dark of coal-dust to grit of stone-mason and
sawdust of timber-merchant, through the lustre of lard and butter
and meat, to the perfume of the chemist and the disinfectant of the
doctor, on to the serene gold-tarnish of bank-managers, cashiers for
the firm, clergymen and such-like, as far as the automobile
refulgence of the general-manager of all the collieries. Here the
_ne plus ultra_. The general manager lives in the shrubberied
seclusion of the so-called Manor. The genuine Hall, abandoned by the
"County," has been taken over as offices by the firm.

Here we are then: a vast substratum of colliers; a thick sprinkling
of tradespeople intermingled with small employers of labour and
diversified by elementary schoolmasters and nonconformist clergy; a
higher layer of bank-managers, rich millers and well-to-do
ironmasters, episcopal clergy and the managers of collieries, then
the rich and sticky cherry of the local coal-owner glistening over
all.

Such the complicated social system of a small industrial town in the
Midlands of England, in this year of grace 1920. But let us go back
a little. Such it was in the last calm year of plenty, 1913.

A calm year of plenty. But one chronic and dreary malady: that of
the odd women. Why, in the name of all prosperity, should every
class but the lowest in such a society hang overburdened with Dead
Sea fruit of odd women, unmarried, unmarriageable women, called old
maids? Why is it that every tradesman, every school-master, every
bank-manager, and every clergyman produces one, two, three or more
old maids? Do the middle-classes, particularly the lower
middle-classes, give birth to more girls than boys? Or do the lower
middle-class men assiduously climb up or down, in marriage, thus
leaving their true partners stranded? Or are middle-class women very
squeamish in their choice of husbands?

However it be, it is a tragedy. Or perhaps it is not.

Perhaps these unmarried women of the middle-classes are the famous
sexless-workers of our ant-industrial society, of which we hear so
much. Perhaps all they lack is an occupation: in short, a job. But
perhaps we might hear their own opinion, before we lay the law down.

In Woodhouse, there was a terrible crop of old maids among the
"nobs," the tradespeople and the clergy. The whole town of women,
colliers' wives and all, held its breath as it saw a chance of one
of these daughters of c