Esther had a lover. Mrs. Horrocks's eyes were feline, but she was
obliged to admit she was at fault. Jim married, and an agreeable
opportunity was presented for the expression of amazement that his
wife's father and mother felt safe in allowing their child to enter
such a family--but then she came from Norwich. The majority of the
poor in Blackdeep Fen sided with the Suttons, and here and there a
pagan farmer boldly declared that old Mrs. Sutton and her daughter
were of a right good sort, and that there was not a
straightforrarder man than Jim in Ely market. But to respectable
Blackdeep society the Suttons remained a vexatious knot which it
could not unpick and lay straight. Nobody, as Mrs. Horrocks
observed, knew how to take them. Mrs. Craggs wore her wedding-ring,
and when she was in Mrs. Jarvis's shop looked her straight in the
face and asked for what she wanted as if she were the parson's wife.
But that, according to Mrs. Horrocks, just showed her impudence.
'What a time that poor Craggs in London must have had of it:' (Mr.
Horrocks was not present). 'Lord! how I do pity the man.' 'And
yet,' added Mrs. Jarvis, 'and YET, you might eat your dinner off
Mrs. Craggs's floor. I call it hers, for she cleans it.' Clearly
the living-room ought to have been a pigsty. It was particularly
annoying that, although Mrs. Sutton and her family by absence from
church had become infidels, they did not go to the devil openly as
they ought to do, and thereby relieve Blackdeep of that pain and
even hatred which are begotten by an obstinate exception to what
would otherwise be a general law. Parson often preached that
everybody was either a sheep or a goat. The Suttons were not sheep-
-that was certain; and yet it was difficult to classify them as
ordinary Blackdeep goats, creatures with horns. Mrs. Jarvis had
heard that there was a peculiar breed of goats with sheep's wool and
without horns. 'Esther Craggs,' she maintained, 'will one day show