ouse save once a week, when she
visited younger generations, who still took from her and gave nothing
back. She owed the advancement to Rachel, who, quite unused to
engaging servants, and alarmed by harrowing stories of the futility
of registry offices and advertisements, had seen in Mrs. Tams the
comfortable solution of a fearful problem. Louis would have preferred
a younger, slimmer, nattier, fluffier creature than Mrs. Tams, but was
ready to be convinced that such as he wanted lived only in his fancy.
Moreover, he liked Mrs. Tams, and would occasionally flatter her by a
smack on the shoulder.

So in the April dusk Mrs. Tams stood in the windy lobby, and was full
of vanity and the pride of life. She gazed forth in disdain at
the little crowd of inquisitive idlers and infants that remained
obstinately on the pavement hoping against hope that the afternoon's
marvellous series of social phenomena was not over. She scorned the
slatternly, stupid little crowd for its lack of manners. Yet she ought
to have known, and she did know as well as any one, that though in
Bursley itself people will pretend out of politeness that nothing
unusual is afoot when something unusual most obviously _is_
afoot, in the small suburbs of Bursley, such as Bycars, no human
or divine power can prevent the populace from loosing its starved
curiosity openly upon no matter what spectacle that may differ from
the ordinary. Alas! Mrs. Tams in the past had often behaved even as
the simple members of that crowd. Nevertheless, all ceremonies being
over, she shut the front door with haughtiness, feeling glad that she
was not as others are. And further, she was swollen and consequential
because, without counting persons named Batchgrew, two visitors had
come in a motor, and because at one supreme moment no less than two
motors (including a Batchgrew motor) had been waiting together at
the curb in front of her cleaned steps. Who could have foreseen this
arrant snobbishness in the excellent child of nature, Mrs. Tams?

A far worse example of spiritual iniquity sat lolling on the
Chesterfield in the parlour. Ignorance and simplicity and a menial
imitativeness might be an excuse for Mrs. Tams; but not for Rachel,
the mistress, the omniscient, the all-powerful, the giver of good,
who could make and unmake with a nod. Rachel sitting gorgeous on the
Chesterfield amid an enormous twilit welter and litter of disarranged
chairs and tables; empty teapots, cups, jug