revival
services with a very tender conscience, and in assuming the chain of
office he assumed the duty of setting an example. It was to be no excuse
to him that in spite of bye-laws ten thousand other chimneys and kilns
were breathing out black filth all over the Five Towns. So far as he
could cure it the smoke nuisance had to be cured, or his conscience
would know the reason why! So he sat on the borough bench and fined
himself for his own smoke, and then he installed gas ovens. The town
laughed, of course, and spoke of him alternately as a rash fool, a
hypocrite, and a mere pompous ass. In a few months smoke had practically
ceased to ascend from the mayoral manufactory. The financial result to
the mayor was such as to encourage the tenderness of consciences. But
that is not the point. The point is that Mrs Garlick, re-entering her
house one autumn morning after a visit to the market, paused to look at
the windows, and then said to Maria:

"Maria, what have you to do this afternoon?"

Now Mrs Garlick well knew what Maria had to do.

"I'm going to change the curtains, mum."

"Well, you needn't," said Mrs Garlick. "It's made such a difference up
here, there being so much less smoke, that upon my word the curtains
will do another three months quite well!"

"Well, mum, I never did!" observed Maria, meaning that so shocking a
proposal was unprecedented in her experience. Yet she was thirty-five.

"Quite well!" said Mrs Garlick, gaily.

Maria said no more. But in the afternoon Mrs Garlick, hearing sounds in
the drawing-room, went into the drawing-room and discovered Maria
balanced on a pair of steps and unhooking lace curtains.

"Maria," said she, "what are you doing?"

Maria answered as busy workers usually do answer unnecessary questions
from idlers.

"I should ha' thought you could see, mum," she said tartly, insolently,
inexcusably.

One curtain was already down.

"Put that curtain back," Mrs Garlick commanded.

"I shall put no curtain back!" said Maria, grimly; her excited
respiration shook the steps. "All to save the washing of four pair o'
curtains! And you know you beat the washerwoman down to tenpence a pair
last March! Three and fo'pence, that is! For the sake o' three and
fo'pence you're willing for all Toft End to point their finger at these
'ere windows."

"Put that curtain back," Mrs Garlick repeated haughtily.

She saw that she had touched Maria in a delicate spot--her worship of
appearanc