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"Now, now!" said Mr Orgreave masterfully. "You've got to come in, so you may as well give up first as last. Janet's in. She's like you and me, she's a bad lot, hasn't been to church." He took Edwin by the arm, and they turned into Oak Street at the lower end.
And Edwin, uplifted, said: "All I say is you can't help what you believe. You can't make yourself believe anything. And I don't see why you should, either. There's no virtue in believing." "Hooray," cried the sedate Tom. "No virtue in believing! Eh, Mr Edwin! Mr Edwin!" This sad expostulation came from Mrs Orgreave. "Don't you see what I mean?" he persisted vivaciously, reddening.
If ever he got an opportunity he should mysteriously tease her on the subject of illegal night excursions! Yes, he should be very witty and ironic. "Nothing but cheek!" He was confirmed in his hostility to her. She had no charm, and yet the entire Orgreave family was apparently infatuated about her. Her interruption on behalf of Victor Hugo seemed to be savage.
Within three minutes, by three different remarks whose occult message no stranger could have understood but which forced itself with unpleasant clearness upon Edwin, Mrs Hamps had conveyed, "Janet Orgreave only cultivates Maggie because Maggie is the sister of Edwin Clayhanger."
Mr Orgreave has to go to London to-day, and mamma wrote to Auntie Janet yesterday to say that I must go with him, if he'd let me, and she would meet me at London. She wants me back. So Auntie Janet is taking me to Knype to meet Mr Orgreave there he's gone to his office first. And the gardener has taken my luggage in the barrow up to Bleakridge Station. Auntie's putting her hat on.
He had never spoken to Tom Orgreave before, but Tom seemed ready to treat him at once as an established acquaintance. Then Alicia had to come forward and shake hands. She could not get a word out. "Now, baby!" Charlie teased her. She tossed her mane, and found refuge by her mother's side. Mrs Orgreave caressed the mane into order. "This is Miss Lessways. Hilda Mr Edwin Clayhanger."
Then she picked up the tray, and, pushing the small table into its accustomed place with a deft twist of the foot, she sailed erect and prim out of the room, and the door primly clicked on her neat-girded waist and flying white ribbons. "And what am I to do with this Signal" Hilda asked, fingering the white, damp paper. "I should like you to read us about the strike," said Mrs. Orgreave.
Mrs Orgreave made no reply, but waited with candid and fretful impatience, thinking of her five absent children, and her ten grandchildren, for the telegram to be opened. Janet opened it. Her lips parted to speak, and remained so in silent astonishment. "Just read that!" she said to Edwin, passing the telegram to him; and she added to her father: "It was for me, after all."
Such a thing could not happen to such as he was... He could not reflect. When he tried to reflect, the top of his head seemed as though it would fly off... Cannon! She was with Cannon somewhere at that very instant... She had specially asked that he should be told. And indeed he had been told before even Mr and Mrs Orgreave... Cannon! She might at that very instant be in Cannon's arms.
As, on one afternoon in late June, he was turning the corner of Trafalgar Road to enter the shop, he surprisingly encountered Charlie Orgreave, whom he had not seen for several years. And when he saw this figure, at once fashionably and carelessly dressed, his first thought was one of deep satisfaction that he was wearing his new Shillitoe suit of clothes.
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