tures or not."

"I should say so most assuredly," the vicar replied, his eyes twinkling
with fun. "What other purpose could you have?"

Miss Tibbits cleared her throat. "I have always understood," she said
primly, "that the sewing club was instituted to make useful garments
for deserving persons, who were, perhaps, so much occupied by family
cares that they had little time available for needle-work."

"That is," said the vicar solemnly, "the laudable object of the sewing
club."

"But I don't suppose," Mrs Grantly remarked briskly, still standing
draped in the obnoxious material, "that there is any bye-law to the
effect that the garments should be of an odious and humiliating
description."

"Of course not," the ladies chorussed, smiling. They were beginning,
all but Miss Tibbits, who was furious, to enjoy Mrs Grantly.

"Then let us," Mrs Grantly's voice suddenly became soft and seductive,
and she flung the folds of material from her, "give them something
pretty. They don't have much, poor things, and it's just as easy to
make them pretty as ugly. Ladies, I've been to a good many sewing
meetings in my life, and I always fight for the same thing, a present
should be just a little bit different--don't you think--not hard and
hideous and ordinary. . . ."

"That material is bought and paid for," Miss Tibbits interrupted, "it
must be used."

"It shall be used," cried Mrs Grantly, "I'll buy it, and I'll make it
into dusters for which purpose it was obviously intended, and every
woman in Redmarley shall have two for Christmas as an extra. A good
strong duster never comes amiss."

"Perhaps," Miss Tibbits said coldly, "you will undertake to procure the
material."

"Certainly," said Mrs Grantly, "but I'll buy it in blouse lengths, and
every one different. Why should a whole village wear the same thing as
though it was a reformatory?"

It appeared that the vicar had called with his list of the "deserving
poor." In five minutes Mrs Grantly had detached each person, and made
a note of her age and circumstances. She had only been in the village
a week, and she already knew every soul in it.

She whirled off the vicar in a gale of enthusiasm, nobody else got a
word in edgewise. Finally she departed with him into the hall, and saw
him out at the front door, and her last whispered words were
characteristic:

"You've let that Tibbits woman bully you for twenty years, now I'm
going to bully you for a bit instead,