“Mrs Steele and me not being on visiting terms—­” Miss Oliver started to explain pathetically.  “Yes, I know it was my duty to call when they first came:  but what with one thing and another, and not knowing how she might take it—­Of course, Mary-Martha, if you insist on walking ahead like a band-major, I can’t prevent it.  But it only shows a ruck in your left stocking.”

Mrs Polsue turned about in the road.  “You were hoping, you said, that I’d be taking a proper stand?  If that woman comes any airs over me—­”

She walked on without finishing the sentence.  “She’s every bit as much afraid as I am,” said Miss Oliver to herself, as she panted to catch up; “the difference being that I want to put it off and she’s dying to get it over.”  Aloud she remarked, “Well, and that’s all I was saying.  As like as not they’ll be trying to come it over us; and if we leave it to Hambly—­”

“Him?” Mrs Polsue sniffed.  “You leave it to me!”

The Vicar welcomed them in the porch, and his pleasantly courteous smile, which took their friendliness for granted, disarmed Mrs Polsue for a moment.  “It took the starch out of you straight:  I couldn’t help noticin’,” was Miss Oliver’s comment, later in the day.  “It took me by surprise,” Mrs Polsue corrected her:  “—­a man has no business to stand grimacing in his own doorway like a—­a—­” “Butler,” suggested Miss Oliver, “—­like a figure in a weather-house.  What do you know about butlers? . . . but”—­after a pause—­“I daresay you’re right, there.  I’ve heard it put about that her father used to keep one; and quite likely, now you mention it, she stuck her husband in the doorway to hide the come-down.”  “The pot-plants were lovely,” Miss Oliver sighed; “they made me feel for the moment like Eve in the Garden of Eden.”  “Then I’m thankful you didn’t behave like it. I was stiff enough by time we reached the drawing-room.”

“Stiff” indeed but faintly describes Mrs Polsue’s demeanour in the drawing-room; where, within a few minutes, were gathered Mrs Pamphlett, Mr Hambly, Dr Mant (who had obligingly motored over from St Martin’s), five or six farm wives, with a husband or two (notably Farmer Best of Tresunger, an immense man who, apparently mistaking the occasion for a wedding, had indued a pair of white cotton gloves, which he declined to remove, ignoring his wife’s nudges).  Four or five timid “women-workers,” with our two ladies and the host and hostess, completed the gathering.

Mrs Steele opened the business amid an oppressive silence, against which all the Vicar’s easy chat had contended in vain.

“I hope,” she began nervously, “that at such a time none of you will object to my using the word I want to use, and calling you ‘friends’? . . .  My friends, then—­It was at my husband’s suggestion that I invited you to meet this afternoon—­because, you know, somebody must make a beginning.”