‘It has tired you, though,’ said Winifred.  ’Lie quite down and sleep.’

Of course, however, Albinia would not believe that she was tired, and began to talk of the Osborns and their party—­she was annoyed at the being thought too fine.  ’If it were not such a penance, and if you would not be gone home, I really would ask you to take the girls, Winifred.’

‘I shall not be gone home.’

‘Yes, you will.  I am well, and every one wants you.’

’Did you not hear Willie’s complimentary message, that he is never naughty now, because Gilbert makes him so happy?’

‘But, Winifred, the penny club!  The people must have their things.’

‘They can wait, or—­’

‘It is very well for us to talk of waiting,’ cried Albinia, ’but how should we like a frosty night without cloaks, or blankets, or fire?  I did not think it of you, Winifred.  It is the first winter I have been away from my poor old dames, and I did think you would have cared for them.’

And thereupon her overwrought spirits gave way in a flood of tears, as she angrily averted her face from her sister, who could have cried too, not at the injustice, but with compassion and perplexity lest there should be an equally violent reaction either of remorse or of mirth.

It must be confessed that Albinia was very much the creature of health.  Never having been ill before, the depression had been so new that it broke her completely down; convalescence made her fractious.

Recovery, however, filled her with such an ecstasy of animal spirits that her time seemed to be entirely passed in happiness or in sleep, and cares appeared to have lost all power.  It was so sudden a change that Winifred was startled, though it was a very pleasant one, and she did not reflect that this was as far from the calm, self-restrained, meditative tranquillity enjoined by Maurice, as had been the previous restless, querulous state.  Both were body more than mind, but Mrs. Ferrars was much more ready to be merry with Albinia than to moralize about her.  And it was droll that the penny club was one of the first stages in her revival.

‘Oh, mamma,’ cried Lucy, flying in, ’Mr. Dusautoy is at the door.  There is such a to do.  All the women have been getting gin with their penny club tickets, and Mrs. Brock has been stealing the money, and Mr. Dusautoy wants to know if you paid up three-and-fourpence for the Hancock children.’

Albinia instantly invited Mr. Dusautoy to explain in person, and he entered, hearty and pleasant as ever, but in great haste, for he had left his Fanny keeping the peace between five angry women, while he came out to collect evidence.

The Bayford clothing-club payments were collected by Mrs. Brock, the sexton’s wife, and distributed by tickets to be produced at the various shops in the town.  Mrs. Brock had detected some women exchanging their tickets for gin, and the offending parties retaliated by accusing her of embezzling the subscriptions, both parties launching into the usual amount of personalities and exaggerations.