“Our mare’s gone lame,” Mrs Sutton answered, “and as I’m bound to get about I’m bound to walk.”

He descended instantly from the dogcart.  “Climb up,” he said, “and tell me where you want to go to.”

“Nay, nay.”

“Climb up,” he repeated, and he helped her into the dogcart.

“Well,” she said, laughing, “what must be, must.  I was trudging home, and I hope it isn’t out of your way.”

“It isn’t,” he said; “I’m for Toft End, and I should have driven up Trafalgar Road anyhow.”

Mrs Sutton was one of James Peake’s ideals.  He worshipped this small frail woman of fifty-five, whose soft eyes were the mirror of as candid a soul as was ever prisoned in Staffordshire clay.  More than forty years ago he had gone to school with her, and the remembrance of having kissed the pale girl when she was crying over a broken slate was still vivid in his mind.  For nearly half a century she had remained to him exactly that same ethereal girl.  The sole thing about her that puzzled him was that she should have found anything attractive in the man whom she allowed to marry her—­Alderman Sutton.  In all else he regarded her as an angel.  And to many another, besides James Peake, it seemed that Sarah Sutton wore robes of light.  She was a creature born to be the succour of misery, the balm of distress.  She would have soothed the two thieves on Calvary.  Led on by the bounteous instinct of a divine, all-embracing sympathy, the intrepid spirit within her continually forced its fragile physical mechanism into an activity which appeared almost supernatural.  According to every rule of medicine she should have been dead long since; but she lived—­by volition.  It was to the credit of Bursley that the whole town recognized in Sarah Sutton the treasure it held.

“I wanted to see you,” Mrs Sutton said, after they had exchanged various inquiries.

“What about?”

“Mrs Lovatt was telling me yesterday you hadn’t made up your mind about that organ subscription.”  They were ascending the steepest part of Oldcastle Street, and Peake lowered the reins and let the horse into a walk.

“Now look here, Mrs Sutton,” he began, with passionate frankness, “I can talk to you.  You know me; you know I’m not one of their set, as it were.  Of course I’ve got a pew and all that; but you know as well as I do that I don’t belong to the chapel lot.  Why should they ask me?  Why should they come to me?  Why should I give all that sum?”

“Why?” she repeated the word, smiling.  “You’re a generous man; you’ve felt the pleasure of giving.  I always think of you as one of the most generous men in the town.  I’m sure you’ve often realized what a really splendid thing it is to be able to give.  D’you know, it comes over me sometimes like a perfect shock that if I couldn’t give—­something, do—­something, I shouldn’t be able to live; I would be obliged to go to bed and die right off.”