The chairman was already in his place; on the table before him was a soup-plate, into which each visitor threw a contribution on arriving.  Seated on the benches were a number of men, women, and girls, all with pewters or glasses before them, and the air was thickening with smoke of pipes.  The beneficiary of the evening, a portly person with a face of high satisfaction, sat near the chairman, and by him were two girls of decent appearance, his daughters.  The president puffed at a churchwarden and exchanged genial banter with those who came up to deposit offerings.  Mr. Dick Perkins, the Vice, was encouraging a spirit of conviviality at the other end.  A few minutes after Thyrza and her companions had entered, a youth of the seediest appearance struck introductory chords on the piano, and started off at high pressure with a selection of popular melodies.  The room by degrees grew full.  Then the chairman rose, and with jocular remarks announced the first song.

Totty had several acquaintances present, male and female; her laughter frequently sounded above the hubbub of voices.  Thyrza, who had declined to have anything to drink, shrank into as little space as possible; she was nervous and self-reproachful, yet the singing and the uproar gave her a certain pleasure.  There was nothing in the talk around her and the songs that were sung that made it a shame for her to be present.  Plebeian good-humour does not often degenerate into brutality at meetings of this kind until a late hour of the evening.  The girls who sat with glasses of beer before them, and carried on primitive flirtations with their neighbours, were honest wage-earners of factory and workshop, well able to make themselves respected.  If they lacked refinement, natural or acquired, it was not their fault; toil was behind them and before, the hours of rest were few, suffering and lack of bread might at any moment come upon them.  They had all thrown their hard-earned pence into the soup-plate gladly and kindly; now they enjoyed themselves.

The chairman excited enthusiasm by announcement of a song by Mr. Sam Coppock—­known to the company as ‘Chaffy Sem.’  Sam was a young man who clearly had no small opinion of himself; he wore a bright-blue necktie, and had a geranium flower in his button-hole; his hair was cut as short as scissors could make it, and as he stood regarding the assembly he twisted the ends of a scarcely visible moustache.  When he fixed a round glass in one eye and perked his head with a burlesque of aristocratic bearing, the laughter and applause were deafening.

’He’s a warm ‘un, is Sem!’ was the delighted comment on all hands.

The pianist made discursive prelude, then Mr. Coppock gave forth a ditty of the most sentimental character, telling of the disappearance of a young lady to whom he was devoted.  The burden, in which all bore a part, ran thus: 

We trecked ’er little footprints in the snayoo,
We trecked ’er little footprints in the snayoo,
I shall ne’er forget the d’y
When Jenny lost her w’y,
And we trecked ’er little footprints in the snayoo!