“Scantlebury!” exclaimed Mrs Polsue with a sniff.  “He only got the job through his son’s being a local preacher and him a freemason.  Do you think Scantlebury could make typhoid fever, if he tried?”

“Well, no; if you put it in that way.  A Board School was as high as ever his parents could afford to send him:  and then he went into the greengrocery, and at one time was said to be going to fail for over three hundred, when this place was found for him.  A fair-spoken little man, but scientific in no sense o’ the word.”

There was a pause.

“The silly man collected himself towards the end,” said Mrs Polsue.  “There was sense enough in what he said about every man’s duty just now—­that it was to fight, not to argue; though, after his manner, he didn’t pitch it half strong enough. . . .  I’ve been thinking that very thing over, Charity Oliver, ever since the Vicarage meetin’, and it seems to me that if we’re to be an Emergency Committee in anything better than name, our first business should be to stir up the young men to enlist.  The way these tall fellows be hangin’ back, and their country callin’ out for them!  There’s young Seth Minards, for instance; an able-bodied young man if ever there was one.  But I don’t mind telling you I’m taking some steps to stir up their consciences.”

“I did hear,” said her friend sweetly, “that you had been stirring up the women.  In fact it reached me, dear, that Mrs Penhaligon had already chased you to the door with a besom—­and she the mildest woman, which no doubt you reckoned on for a beginning.  But if you mean to tackle the young men as well—­though I can’t call to mind that the Vicarage meetin’ set it down as any part of your duties—­”

“I don’t take my orders from any Vicarage meeting,” snapped Mrs Polsue; “not at any time, and least of all in an emergency like this, when country and conscience call me together to a plain duty.  As for Mrs Penhaligon, you were misinformed, and I advise you to be more careful how you listen to gossip.  The woman was insolent, but she did not chase me—­as you vulgarly put it, no doubt repeating your informant’s words—­she did not chase me out of doors with a besom.  On the contrary, she gave me full opportunity to say what I thought of her.”

“Yes; so I understood, dear:  and it was after that, and in consequence (as I was told) that she—­”

“If you are proposing, Charity Oliver, to retail this story to others, you may drag in a besom if you will.  But as a fact Mrs Penhaligon resorted to nothing but bad language, in which she was backed up by her co-habitant, or whatever you prefer to call him, the man Nanjivell.”

“Yes, I heard that he took a hand in it.”  “There you are right.  He took a hand in it to the extent of informing me that Mrs Penhaligon was under his charge, if you ever heard anything so brazen. . . .  I have often wondered,” added Mrs Polsue, darkly musing, “why Polpier has not, before this, become as one of the Cities of the Plain.”